


Oh, I Just Know There's Something Bigger Out There

by Setari



Series: Somewhere Just Beyond My Reach, There's Someone Reaching Back For Me [2]
Category: Hulk (2003), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Avenger Loki (Marvel), BAMF Darcy Lewis, Background Relationships, Bruce Banner Has Issues, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Canon Divergence - Iron Man 3, Canon Divergence - Thor: The Dark World, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, Darcy Lewis's iPod, Fix-It of Sorts, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Hulk Needs a Hug, Jane Foster/Thor - Freeform, Loki/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark - Freeform, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Nick Fury Knows All, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 51,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24643756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setari/pseuds/Setari
Summary: Darcy Lewis has always been just a little bit left of normal.Her multiple soulmarks are the best and worst of it.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark, Bruce Banner/Darcy Lewis, Bruce Banner/Nick Fury, Bruce Banner/Nick Fury/Darcy Lewis, Darcy Lewis & Loki, Darcy Lewis & Tony Stark, Nick Fury/Darcy Lewis
Series: Somewhere Just Beyond My Reach, There's Someone Reaching Back For Me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1781743
Comments: 127
Kudos: 439





	1. Darcy

**Author's Note:**

> TAH-DAH!
> 
> After four years, the promised sequel is finally finished! Thank you all for your patience, and I hope it lives up to your expectations =P

_No, they don’t._

_I- Uh, I'm sorry, I- I have to go._

Darcy Lewis had grown up feeling like the odd one out. It wasn’t that her family didn’t love her, or that she didn’t love them, it was just that she was different, and that coloured everything. Her mother had smothered her in affection, as if trying to make up for the fact that she only had one parent by loving her twice as much. In comparison, her step-father didn’t seem to know how to handle her. He never seemed quite comfortable treating Darcy like his daughter when she wasn’t, but he obviously wasn’t comfortable leaving her up to her mother to care for, either. And her extended families liked to pretend she didn’t exist, born in such a scandalous manner as she had been.

She’d asked about her father once, when she was still young enough that she barely even understood where babies came from. Her mother’s face had gone pinched and sour, and she’d informed Darcy that she didn’t need to worry about him at all. Darcy hadn’t let it go until Moira had almost been driven to shouting at her, which had never happened before, and Darcy realised that the topic of her father was a _bad_ subject to talk about. She didn’t bring it up again.

Then there was the fact that where other kids were shoving toast in the video player as toddlers, Darcy took it apart, and put it back together without breaking anything. She liked taking things apart, figuring out how and why they worked, and then putting them back together again, sometimes better than they were before. At least in her curiosity, she was a normal child, annoying everyone around her with endless streams of ‘why’ questions.

But the worst of it was her soulmarks. Plural. Her mother wasn’t surprised, but the rest of the Lewis clan looked at her as if she was carrying some sort of infectious disease whenever the subject came up. The first and only time she ever told anyone, she was five years old, and her best friend had admitted to her that she didn’t have a soulmark, and gone so far as to show Darcy her two bare wrists as proof. Darcy had decided that if Rachel was going to share that, then Darcy could share, too. She’d shown Rachel her own wrists, and the two different soulmarks there. Rachel had gaped at her. It was out of awe, yes, but it still left Darcy’s skin crawling.

The thing was, she wasn’t _special_. Or at least, _she_ didn’t think so. These odd things just _happened_ to her, it wasn’t the stuff she _chose_. She chose ordinary things, like those super awesome tights with the fancy patterns on them, and the Harry Potter books, and the newest Pokemon game. She adored baby animals, and listened to cheesy boy-bands, and got excited about explosions. By the time she was starting middle school, Darcy was done being the odd one out. She stopped tinkering, she made no mention of her second soulmark, she decided to be the best big sister to her brand new baby brother that she could be, and never made any mention of the fact that he was only half her brother.

Her sixteenth birthday party was incredible. Incredible and _ordinary_ , and she loved it. She went shopping with a bunch of friends, and then to a concert in the evening. And when she got home, exhausted but beaming, and ready for a sleepover with lots of action flicks and nail-polish, she found a brand new, bright red convertible sitting in the driveway, with a great big pink ribbon stuck to the corner of the windscreen with a tag attached that said, in big bold printed letters: ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DARCY’

Darcy maybe shrieked a lot. And she was so preoccupied with the car, and gushing over it with her friends that she didn’t notice her mother face-palming when she caught sight of the car, drawn outside by Darcy’s delighted yelling. She did notice her mother when she approached the vehicle Darcy was now sitting in, having found the keys in the driver’s side sun visor. “Mom!” Darcy exclaimed, looking up with glee. “This isn’t from you, is it?”

Moira snorted. “If you think we have, what? Eighty grand? To drop on a car for you, Darce, you’re delusional.” She leaned over the door to drop a kiss on Darcy’s hair. “No, I don’t know who it’s from. Maybe Grandma Lewis?” She suggested mildly.

Darcy gave her mother a deeply sceptical look. “If you think Grandma Lewis likes me enough to drop eighty grand on a car for me, Mom, you’re delusional.” She retorted smartly. Moira rolled her eyes.

“We’ll get you a provisional licence tomorrow. For now, get yourself inside, madam.” Moira instructed. “Your pizzas are going cold.” At that, the small gaggle of girls abandoned the car to rush inside and claim their dinner. Darcy thought she might have heard her mother mutter ‘kill that man’ as she darted inside, but she wasn’t sure, and a moment later, she forgot all about it in favour of fighting Hannah for the lion’s share of the pepperoni pizza.

Three days later, Darcy was still riding the high of anticipating her first driving lesson in her very own car, when it felt as though the world fell apart. She’d just stopped off in the bathroom between lessons, and she removed her soulmark bracelets to wash her hands. The moment her right cuff fell away, she froze, because instead of the familiar stammering in an adorably scribbly handwriting, there was just… fuzz. She thought she could still just about make out the beginning and the end, but the words in the middle – the bit that said ‘I’m sorry, I- I have’ – were completely unintelligible scribbles now.

Darcy didn’t quite know how to process that. Something was very obviously wrong, but she didn’t know what. If the mark was _gone_ , she’d know that her soulmate had died, but this? She’d _never_ heard of someone’s soulmark _breaking_. Maybe they were dying? Maybe they’d lost their voice, and she’d _never_ find them? Maybe _she_ was the one that was broken? Maybe the universe had realised it had made a mistake, and was trying to take her second soulmate away from her?

It wasn’t until Rachel came looking for her that Darcy realised she’d completely lost track of time. She’d just been stood there, staring at her wrist and frantically trying to think as she cried. Rachel took one look at her wrist, and understood. Like the good friend she was, she put Darcy’s bracelets back on for her, and then ushered her to the school nurse. “Something’s wrong with her soulmark.” Rachel said.

When the nurse, frowning in concern, went to unlace Darcy’s left bracelet, Darcy shook her head and presented her right wrist. The nurse gave her an impatient look, and reached again for her left wrist. Frustrated, Darcy undid the right bracelet with her teeth, and presented the fuzzy, unreadable soulmark to the nurse with a heaving sob.

The nurse looked shocked. Then she looked unimpressed. “Miss Lewis.” She chided sternly. “You’re a very good actress, but really. What exactly are you trying to do?”

Darcy gaped at the woman. Rachel started to protest on her behalf, but Darcy suddenly found that she was done. She was just done. She wanted to go home. She wanted her mom. “Fuck you.” She choked out, getting up and walking out as the nurse made outraged protests about her language. Still unable to stop crying, she fumbled with her mobile until she managed to ring the house phone. The moment she heard her mother’s voice, the fight drained out of her again. “Mom?”

“Darcy, sweetheart? What’s wrong? Have you been crying?” Moira fretted immediately.

“Something’s wrong with my soulmark, Mom.” Darcy said, voice shaking.

Moira didn’t respond for a moment. “What do you mean?” She asked gently. So gently it was almost painful. “Has one of them… gone?” She asked carefully.

Darcy sniffed. “No.” She denied, and heard her mother’s relieved sigh. “No, but the right one’s gone _fuzzy_ , Mom. You can’t even read it anymore! What… Do you know what that means? The nurse thought I was _kidding_ or something, and I don’t-”

“Deep breaths, Darcy. I’ll be right there. Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out.” Moira assured her.

The fact that her mother didn’t know what was wrong made the panic come roaring back, and Darcy sat down abruptly on the sidewalk out in front of the school. “Okay.” She agreed thickly. “Okay, Mom.” Her mother assured her that everything would be okay, that she loved her, and that she’d be there soon before she hung up. Then Darcy was left to wait on her own.

Rachel joined her a few minutes later, looking worried, but she didn’t say a word, which Darcy was weirdly grateful for. By the time Moira arrived, Darcy was done crying, and was fully ready to figure this shit out. Moira looked at her wrist, and to Darcy’s mixed relief and trepidation, a look of grim understanding flashed across Moira’s face.

“What is it?” Darcy demanded urgently.

Moira looked up, and Darcy saw her hesitate, saw her considering a lie. Then she sighed heavily. “I saw something like this once, when I was studying at MIT. It was part of a study on Multiple Personality Disorder.” She finished tiredly.

“Oh.” Darcy said, trying to process that. “So… My soulmate has multiple personalities now?”

“It’s not as simple as that.” Moira corrected, still using that gentle, patient voice that Darcy was starting to heartily dislike. “We don’t really understand much about MPD, and I didn’t study it in depth, that’s psychology, not cognitive science. But it almost always stems from a great trauma.”

Darcy swallowed hard, aching at the thought of her soulmate out there suffering that much without her there to… to what? And anyway, she had no idea if they were alone. Maybe they had found their other soulmate already, and Darcy was the one dawdling here on her own. “I… I suppose there’s nothing much I can do about it, huh?” She asked eventually, even though it hurt.

“Not really, sweetheart.” Moira agreed sadly. “Come on, why don’t you come home early today? I’ll call the school once you’re home and tell them you’re sick, okay?”

“Yeah. Sounds… Sounds good.” Darcy agreed vaguely.

She went home with her mother, and spent the rest of the afternoon reading up about Multiple Personality Disorder. The impression she got was that most doctors didn’t think it was real, but there was a stubborn, vocal few who made very good cases for it existing. And the general consensus among them was that the best thing to do for someone with the disorder was to be kind, patient and empathetic. Before she went to bed, she carefully wrote out what her soulmark used to say, just to make sure she wouldn’t forget it. The idea of not being able to recognise her soulmate when she found them was almost enough to make her panic again.

Eventually, she got used to her strange, fuzzy soulmark. She studied it, spent a lot of time looking at it, and sometimes she found that she could almost see three new words overlaying the original. It happened only rarely that the new words seemed clearer than the rest, but just before she started her third year of college, she finally deciphered what the new words were.

_Want smash too?_

It wasn’t particularly eloquent, but Darcy found herself oddly charmed by it all the same.

Unfortunately she was mostly distracted from contemplation of her increasingly bizarre soulmarks by her third year of college, which was intense. And her fourth year was only more so. Her discomfort with anything that singled her out as different had carried through to college, so although she did take a mechanics course, her major was political science. The thing was, she _liked_ figuring out how things worked, but machines she was _good at_ , and that made her uncomfortable. She was pretty average at understanding how systems of government and politics worked, and she enjoyed the challenge of that. She enjoyed having to fight for it, and not getting looks of awe and curiosity whenever she figured something out, because most everyone else in her classes were getting there about the same time as her, if not before.

Earning her Bachelors was oddly liberating. This was ordinary Darcy Lewis succeeding at something ordinary. She didn’t have to be a special little snowflake, because she could just be herself, and that was enough to succeed. Her mother cried a lot, and kept saying how very proud she was, her father clapped her on the shoulder, only slightly awkwardly, and congratulated her, and her brother didn’t seem to care much what was going on, but told her she was awesome anyway. She promised to stay in touch with all her new friends, and maybe cried a bit herself, but she’d never admit to it, and then the summer was on her.

The thing was, she didn’t actually know what she wanted to _do_ with her shiny new Political Science Degree. She’d studied it for the fun of studying it, not because she wanted it for something in the future. She considered staying at college to get another Bachelors, or going on to get a Masters in political science, or maybe looking for work. Her mother insisted she stay in school, and _that_ was when Darcy found out that her college fund was _ridiculous_ , and she could probably stay in higher education for the rest of her life and never have to worry about student loans or _anything_.

“Where did this _come from_?!” Darcy demanded, when her mother showed her the paperwork for the account.

Moira made an unhappy little noise in the back of her throat, sort of almost a scoff, but not quite. Darcy was kind of impressed, and slightly disgusted, and mostly worried. “The same place your car came from, Darcy, sweetheart. From you father.” She huffed.

For just a moment, Darcy misunderstood, and lifted her head to protest that David _did not_ have this kind of money to spend on a kid that wasn’t even _his_ \- And then realisation dawned, and she gaped at her mother. It had to be the first time Moira had ever voluntarily raised the subject, as far as Darcy knew. And she obviously wasn’t happy about it. “My… my dad?” Darcy dared to ask.

“Yes.” Moira said shortly.

“He got me my car?” She pressed. Moira just nodded unhappily. “I… Can I… I wanna thank him.”

Moira gritted her teeth. “Just leave it, Darcy.” She insisted. “We’re better off with as little to do with him as possible.” Darcy opened her mouth to protest that obviously, she was benefiting a great deal from her father, but Moira pressed on over her in a clipped tone that Darcy had come to learn was the one her mother used when she desperately wanted to shout, but wouldn’t shout at Darcy. “No, Darcy. Even if I did know how to get in touch with him, I don’t want you to. You are better off _not_ knowing him.” She insisted, as stern as she ever was.

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She groaned, because she knew she wouldn’t get anywhere with her mother. It didn’t stop her looking into it on her own. The thing was there wasn’t much she could do. There was no name listed on her birth certificate. Which she thought was a little irresponsible of her mother, since she obviously _knew_ who Darcy’s dad was, but left Darcy with little enough to go on. Her dad was rich. And he’d been at MIT at the same time as her mother. That really didn’t narrow it down all that much.

In the end, she let it go. She decided that she would take advantage of the college fund, and hope that her dad knew through her use of it that she was grateful. Without needing to worry about money as long as she was at school, Darcy decided she’d get her poli-sci Masters just because she wanted it, and she could worry about what she might do afterwards, well, _afterwards_.

Culver University was amazing, even if Darcy did kind of avoid the extensive science departments. The university had a rather aggressive approach to trying to get young women to study STEM fields, and Darcy adamantly did not want to get roped into being remarkable. Nope. None of that for Darcy Lewis, thank you.

This had the unfortunate side-effect of leaving her with a deficiency of science credits as she approached the end of her two years of study. On discussing the matter, she found she could take a summer internship and get her degree at the end of it. Which was great except most of the internships had been taken or weren’t convinced a poli-sci student would do the work well. And that was how Darcy Lewis came to be working for Dr Jane Foster when she ran over a Norse God.

After all the drama was over, Darcy called her mother, because that was the sort of thing you just did after nearly dying via alien deathbot, really. Of course, she couldn’t _say that_ , so she sold Moira SHIELD’s line about an out of control bush fire. Which… would not convince _anyone_ who actually _looked_ at Puente Antiguo, but for her mother, it worked just fine.

When she came back inside after that phone call and replying to a couple of messages from her friends, she found Jane in a state, darting about yelling as the SHIELD Agents attempted to put all of her machines back where they’d found them. For a moment, Darcy just observed the chaos – as Jane demanded that “No! That was on the shelf up there! Can’t you do anything right?!” – and felt stubborn determination settling solidly in her gut.

The thing was, she’d put a lot of secret love and duct tape into those doodads. She’d taken care of them when Jane was this close to getting pop-tart crumbs in them, and patched them up when Jane’s reckless driving knocked things loose inside. They were as much her babies as they were Jane’s, and she wasn’t very impressed with SHIELD’s treatment of them, either.

“Right.” She said, rolling up her sleeves. “Give me that!” She demanded of the nearest Agent, snatching the oscilloscope off him and diving into the project of putting the lab back together. That was something she was very good at.

By the time everything was put to rights, the Agents had been banished from the lab, and Eric was still hiding from the fuss, so it was just Darcy and Jane, standing in their newly reassembled lab, looking about themselves with satisfaction. Or, Jane was. Darcy was frowning. “Hey, did you see my iPod?” She asked Jane.

Jane sighed in exasperation. “Darcy…!”

“No, I’m serious!” Darcy protested. “I swear, I have seen every single thing they took except my goddamned iPod. Like, are you hiding it to punish me, or do they still have it? What the hell could they want my iPod for? Unless one of them really likes P!nk or something. In which case, it is _so on_ , okay? So on.” Darcy grumbled.

“It probably fell down the side of some cabinet or other, Darcy.” Jane sighed.

Darcy whined. “I loved that iPod. It was my baby. It carried me through six years of higher education, you know. I would not have my Bachelors without it. It _saved my life_ that last year, okay? It was my pride and joy. My _precious_ , Jane!” She may or may not have taken it apart her first year of college and fixed it up so that it had more memory and wouldn’t wear out in a couple of years like they always seemed to do. “It’s got my limited edition Firefly sticker on the back!” was what she chose to complain about, though.

“Jesus Christ, Darcy, it’s just an iPod!” Jane exclaimed, exasperated.

Darcy narrowed her eyes at Jane. “Heathen.” She hissed. Jane rolled her eyes dramatically, but then snorted her way into laughter rather helplessly. Darcy had a few moments of feeling smug about that, before melancholy at the loss of her iPod reasserted itself.

“Okay, lets get back to work.” Jane decided, her eyes going bright with intensity.

Jane kept looking for a way to Asgard. Of course she did. She’d found her _soulmate_. Darcy _could_ have left her to it after she’d gotten her Master’s Degree, but she found, when the time came, that she actually didn’t want to. She liked working with Jane, she liked the fact that she was fairly sure Jane _knew_ that Darcy had been tinkering with her equipment, but she never said a word. She liked the on-the-edge nature of Jane’s work, and the epic-quest feel the whole thing had. Trying to create a bridge between worlds so that she could be with her soulmate. It was the stuff of ancient epics.

And since she’d never really been sure what she was going to do after school anyway, Darcy stuck with Jane. Jane hugged her hard when she told her, and after that made absolutely no fuss about it. If it hadn’t been for the relief in that hug, Darcy would have thought that Jane had just assumed that _of course_ Darcy would stay on as her intern. Darcy liked that about Jane, too.

* * *

“Trum-zoo?” Darcy repeated blankly.

“Tromsø.” Jane corrected absently, flinging plaid shirts into a duffel bag.

“That’s what I said.” Darcy agreed. “Don’t you think this is a bit weird?” She pressed on. “Like, seriously, don’t these things usually take months or whatever? Why is this so urgent that you have to go _today_?”

“I don’t know, Darcy.” Jane snapped. “Maybe they only just now noticed a flaw. Maybe it’s a spontaneous event. I don’t know. But I’m going. And that means you’re going. And that means you need to pack!” She emphasised her point by flinging her spare duffel at Darcy.

“Oh my god, fine!” Darcy replied, fumbling with the bag until she had a good grip on it, then stalking out to go and do as Jane said. “I bet it’s SHIELD’s fault!” She called over her shoulder as she started rooting around in her chest of drawers and shoving fistfuls of clothes into the bag. “Have you heard from Agent Bland-Face Mc-iPod-Thief lately?”

“Not since the last time he called to check on my progress.” Jane hollered back.

“Let me talk to him next time he calls, okay?!” Darcy demanded.

Jane stuck her head out of her room – much nicer than her trailer, although Jane complained that she missed it – to give Darcy a thoroughly unimpressed look. “Absolutely not.” She stated firmly. “Last time you talked to him, you accused him of being an android, and appropriating your iPod for field-repairs!”

“That’s just how we say hello! He goes ‘Miss Lewis’ in that long-suffering tone of his, and I come up with a new wild theory about what he’s done with my iPod, and then he tells me how wrong I am. Don’t diss the tradition, Jane!”

“Tradi- You’ve only spoken to him twice in the last year!”

“Twice on the phone! There was that one last time in Puente Antiguo where we _started_ this grand tradition. Oh, wait, you were busy with the portal thingy that didn’t work, so maybe you missed that.” Darcy mused, pausing with her toothbrush in her hand to think back. “One day he’ll crack, you know.” She went on, resuming packing. “I will get him to laugh one of these days, you mark my words.”

Darcy looked up just in time to see Jane close her eyes in exasperation. Then she zipped her bag shut with an almost violent gesture, and slung it over her shoulder. “Are you ready to go?” She demanded. Darcy flung a few last fluffy jumpers into her bag – What? Norway was cold, right? She needed lots and lots of jumpers – and then hastily scrambled to grab her phone, wallet and keys before Jane did something drastic like left her behind.

“Coming!” Darcy hollered, just to delay that moment of disaster a few more minutes. She flung herself into the passenger seat of the van after five more minutes – she’d almost forgotten to grab a snack – and Jane was starting it up before Darcy even had her seatbelt on. “Seriously, I do not like this at all. It is dodgy in the extreme.” Darcy pointed out once they were on the road.

“Darcy.” Jane said through clenched teeth. “If SHIELD wants us out of the country bad enough to fake a consultancy request from _Tromsø_ , don’t you think maybe we should actually _get the hell out of the country_ as soon as possible?”

Darcy stopped to actually think about that. “I never said it wasn’t a good idea to go.” She finally mused. “But I could do without all the cloak and dagger bullshit, you know? It’s like, okay, we might be in danger. Fine, let’s get out of dodge. I’d go along with that. I have no desire to face another alien deathbot. Like, at all. So why couldn’t they just up and say that, you know?”

“They’re a shady government organisation. I think they’re contractually obliged to hide things from people.” Jane sniped. Evidently, she was still bitter about them stealing her research. Darcy didn’t blame her, really.

“No lies detected.” Darcy agreed. “But, no, this is… I mean, we were _right there_ when _aliens_ – alien _viking gods_ – fell out of the sky. So, working on the theory that they want us out of the country because we’re in danger, and not because they plan to black-bag us for knowing too much-”

“Darcy, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I know, I know. The reasonable time-frame for shut-them-up assassinations passed like, at least six months back. More like nine, really.” Darcy nodded sagely, ignoring the way Jane looked as though she was tempted to bash her head into the steering wheel. “But anyway, my _point_ is… if they came up to us and said ‘oh, hey, you’re in danger, better get out of here’ I would _not_ argue, you know? So why lie? What do they know that they think would make us want to stay?”

“To be fair, when the Destroyer-”

“Alien deathbot.”

“ _-the Destroyer_ came, neither of us evacuated like normal people, did we?”

“And I suppose you did let a crazy homeless person talk you into breaking into and robbing a temporary government facility.” Darcy added.

Jane shot her a brief glare. “And your first reaction to a dangerous situation was to hit it with a car and then taze it.” She retorted.

Darcy grinned. “Yes. Yes it was.” She agreed proudly. “Although, you hit it with the car. I was _all for_ driving in the opposite direction.” Jane grumbled under her breath about that, but didn’t deny it. “Thank the gods for your stubborn recklessness, huh?”

Jane’s shoulders slumped at the abrupt change of tone. And then she smiled, faint and soft, and maybe a little sad. Darcy decided she was going to thump Thor when they found him again for putting that strain in Jane’s smile. “Yeah, I guess so.” She agreed distantly.

Exactly forty eight hours later, when they were sitting in the break room at the observatory in Tromsø watching Thor fight aliens _in New York_ on the TV, Darcy had to bite back a vicious urge to shout ‘I told you so’ at the top of her lungs. That wouldn’t help anyone. Darcy _might_ feel better, for about half a second, until Jane started blaming herself for letting SHIELD put an ocean between herself and her soulmate without a fight. Then Darcy would just feel like she’d kicked a puppy.

Instead of dishing out a well-deserved but profoundly unkind I-told-you-so, Darcy instead dedicated her time to trying to get them a flight back to America. Flights in and out of New York were grounded, as were most of the flights going to the East Coast. The few flights that would be landing in that part of the world were booked full of the rich and stupidly entitled that didn’t give a shit that they were standing in the way of two soulmates being reunited.

In the end, Darcy resorted to calling SHIELD, and got a bit of a shock when, instead of the familiar, long-suffering ‘Miss Lewis?’ she was expecting, she got a crisp, hard, no-nonsense female voice demanding. “Who is this?”

“Uh…” Darcy began. “Who is _this_? Where’s Agent Coulson?”

There was a pause. “Why are you calling Agent Coulson, Miss Lewis?”

Darcy pulled a face that she was quite frankly glad the SHIELD Agent couldn’t see. She was sure it wasn’t flattering. “Are we really going to do this? Like, seriously, are we just going to keep asking questions that no one answers until one of us hangs up? Because, seriously, let me tell you, I am a _champion_ at asking questions. I can go _all day_. Like, why the fuck did you send Jane out of the country when _Thor was there_? And why couldn’t you just tell us? Did something happen to Agent Coulson? What were those alien things in New York? Did I see Agent Mc-Buff-Arms out there, too? I remember him from Puente Antiguo. He was nice. You know what else I remember from Puente Antiguo? That Thor is _Jane’s soulmate_. Why are you standing in the way of true love? Why?” Darcy paused, heard the Agent on the other end of the phone take a breath in preparation to speak, and added “And, as always, what the hell happened to my iPod?”

“ _Why_ did you call SHIELD, Miss Lewis?” The Agent asked again.

“Yeah, see, this, right here? This is exactly my point. You can’t go asking me questions and expecting answers when you’re not giving me any answers to my questions. Seriously, pick one. Answer, and then we can actually have a conversation, instead of just posturing at each other, yeah?”

“We thought Dr Foster was in danger, so we sent her somewhere safe. At the time, we did not anticipate Thor’s arrival.” The Agent told her stiffly.

“Oh, okay. That makes sense.” Darcy agreed. “I was calling because, well, like I said, Jane and Thor are soulmates, and she’d really like to, you know, see him, talk to him, probably ravish him, before he vanishes again like last time. It’s been a year, you know? But all the flights into New York are grounded, so I was hoping you guys might have some strings to pull that could get us back there.” She explained.

“That is not-” The Agent began, but then stopped. Darcy frowned, and was just about to ask what was going on when she started speaking again. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be in touch, Miss Lewis.”

“Hang on!” Darcy yelped before she could hang up. “Like, point the first? Thank you, that’s awesome. I’m really grateful. So’s Jane. Or, she will be, when I tell her. Point the second? I know you’re probably a super-spy so you can pull names out of thin air, but I can’t, and I’d like to know who I’ve been talking to? And point the third? Why _am_ I talking to you – which was fun, seriously, I’m not complaining – when I called Agent Coulson?”

“You’re welcome. I’m Agent Maria Hill, Deputy Director. Agent Coulson is dead.”

It took a minute for that to process. Then Darcy sat down hard. “Oh.” She said quietly. It was strange, because she really hadn’t known Agent Coulson very well at all. He’d been little more than a stranger to her, a distant acquaintance, nothing more. But he’d been kind, and he’d played along with her jokes. She’d _liked_ him. “Oh, I’m… sorry to hear that.” She managed to get out.

“I didn’t realise you knew him that well.” Agent Hill said, clipped.

Darcy shrugged helplessly, even though Agent Hill wouldn’t be able to see her. “I didn’t, not- not really.” She admitted, her voice thick. “He stole my iPod, I com-” Her words suddenly got stuck in her throat, and she pushed her glasses up with her free hand to press her fingers into her eyes as if that might hold back the tears. “…I complained about it.” She finished weakly. “That was… that was pretty much the sum of our relationship.

“He… stole your iPod?” Agent Hill echoed incredulously.

Darcy had to laugh at her tone, and it turned into a sob before she could stop it. She blinked and tears spilled onto her cheeks. “Yeah.” She said, her voice cracking. “I- sorry, I just… For a government stooge, he was really nice, you know? Actually apologised for taking Jane’s stuff, even though, you know, we knew he was just doing his job and everything. And he totally played along when I accused him of being an android. …He was a good man.”

“He was.” Agent Hill agreed, and there was a tightness to her voice that made Darcy wonder if she had been Agent Coulson’s friend. She cleared her throat. “You and Dr Foster have tickets for a flight leaving in two days at ten thirty.” She informed Darcy crisply.

“Two days?!” Darcy yelped.

“It’s the best we can do, Miss Lewis. Take it or leave it.” Agent Hill snapped.

Darcy rolled her eyes and sniffed hard. “Right, yeah, okay. Thank you.” She offered wearily. Agent Hill hung up on her without saying goodbye. “Rude.” Darcy complained, tossing her phone onto the table and dropping her head into her hands. After a moment spent quietly mourning, she lifted her head and drew in a deep breath. “Right, pull yourself together, Lewis.” She muttered. Then she went to find Jane to tell her about their flight.

By the time they were standing on American soil again, Jane was nearly vibrating with frustration. She was so intent on getting out of the airport as fast as possible that she almost missed the man waiting for them in arrivals wearing a Stark Industries security badge. “Foster and Lewis?” He checked.

“That’s us.” Darcy confirmed.

“Happy Hogan.” The man introduced himself. “Mr Stark sent me to bring you to Stark Tower.”

“Is that where Thor is?” Jane demanded.

“Yes.” Happy nodded briskly.

Jane barely waited for him to finish the word before she was heading for the door. Happy blinked after her for a moment, before following briskly. Darcy hurried to catch up. “Soulmates.” She remarked, with a shrug and a roll of her eyes.

“Tell me about it.” Happy replied emphatically.

Darcy decided she liked him.

During the drive to Stark Tower, Darcy chatted with Happy while Jane stared intently out the window, quietly and aggressively shredding a tissue between her fingers. When they pulled up outside the back door of the tower, Jane flung herself out of the car before it had quite stopped moving and into the waiting arms of Thor. Darcy got out and helped Happy collect their bags, ignoring it as Jane stopped kissing Thor and started yelling at him for being gone so long. Once she and Happy had all the bags, Darcy dared to approach. “Ding, ding! Back to your corners!” She yelled, cutting Jane off. “You wanna maybe take this domestic inside before the whole block stops to stare?” She suggested.

Jane flushed in embarrassment. “Yes. Sorry.”

Thor looked a little sheepish, but he still smiled brightly at Darcy. “Lady Darcy, it is good to see you again.” He greeted, stepping back and opening the door for them.

“You too, big guy.” Darcy agreed as she walked past him into a miniature foyer.

“Welcome to Stark Tower, Miss Lewis. Dr Foster.” A crisp, British voice said from somewhere above their heads. Darcy’s head jerked up in surprise, looking for speakers or something, but didn’t find any. “I am JARVIS, an artificial intelligence Mr Stark created to run his household.”

Darcy’s eyes may have bugged out of her head a little bit. “Oh my god, does Stark really have an _AI_ butler?” She asked, her voice maybe squeaking a little bit.

“Yes, ma’am.” JARVIS replied.

“Sweet.” Darcy enthused.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Darcy turned a beaming grin on Jane. “I just got ma’am’d. By an _AI_. A British AI. _Twice_. How cool is that?” Jane only sighed at her, but there was an indulgent smile on her face, so Darcy figured she thought it was pretty cool, too.

“I suspect Mr Stark would take issue with your designating me as British, Miss Lewis.” JARVIS informed her, and holy sweet mother of Jesus, he actually sounded amused. He could do tone, and _amusement_. “My vocal patterns _were_ modelled after a British man, but I myself was created in America, by an American.”

“Yeah, okay. Point.” Darcy acknowledged. “Still, you totally rock the accent.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” JARVIS said again, and Darcy squeaked with delight. “If you would like to step into the lift, I can show you to your suite. There is another on your floor, if Dr Foster requires, but Mr Stark assumed she would prefer to share with Mr Odinson.” JARVIS offered, and yeah, he was doing the amused thing again.

The four of them trooped into the elevator, which promptly whisked them all the way up to the top of the tower. Jane and Thor – and Jane’s bags – were deposited in Thor’s suite, and then Happy accompanied Darcy to the next floor up, where she had a suite of rooms that was, honestly, more like a whole apartment. A _large_ apartment. It was somewhat blandly decorated, but the muted colours were reds and browns and creams, which Darcy decided she _really_ liked.

Darcy did not see much of anyone for the next couple of days. Jane and Thor were holed up in his apartment, getting reacquainted, and Darcy didn’t want to intrude on their host. She chatted some with JARVIS, whose deadpan humour really endeared the AI to her. She roamed around the public areas of the tower, and discovered that JARVIS obviously liked her, too, because he let her into places she really thought he wasn’t supposed to.

It was a little bit of a surprise, a couple of days later, when Jane finally came to find her. She’d expected at least a week of not seeing hide nor hair of her boss. “Darcy, have you _seen_ the labs here?” Jane demanded, that slightly crazy light in her eyes as JARVIS let her into Darcy’s apartment.

“Yes, I have. They’re pretty shiny.” Darcy agreed.

Jane blinked at her. “Wait, _how_ did you see the labs? Do you have a security code?”

“No? Like, who would I have got one of those from? JARVIS let me in.” Darcy informed her, putting her phone – which she’d been playing Angry Birds on – back into her pocket and hopping off the couch. “He likes me.” She added smugly at Jane’s surprised look.

“Well, come on. I want to see _everything_ Stark has in his labs.” Jane announced, catching Darcy by the wrist and dragging her into the elevator.

Thor met them in the labs, and sat at one of the workstations, with his chin propped in his hand and a besotted smile on his face as he watched Jane explore. After a while of letting Jane babble at her, Darcy decided to join Thor. “So, hey, I saw Ms Potts’ press statement a couple of days ago, and she said something about your brother?”

Thor looked at her, then nodded. “Yes. He is here.” He added, jerking his head towards the ceiling.

“Here? In the tower?” Darcy squeaked in surprise. “I mean, Ms Potts did say he was a double agent on our side, but, I dunno, I didn’t expect him to still be around? I thought he’d be back in Asgard or something, you know?”

“Aye, he is here.” Thor confirmed, and for some reason he looked kind of shame-faced. “I would have taken him back to Asgard already, but the Man of Iron and the Lady Pepper insist that he remain here until they can acquire suitable legal representation for him.”

“Legal representation?” Darcy echoed.

“Yes. Loki… was lost to Asgard before he could be tried for the crimes he committed a year ago – one small part of which was sending the Destroyer against your town.” Thor explained. “And there is also the fact that he led this invasion, even though there is proof that he was under a very insidious form of mind control. I fully intended to see him punished for it, but… Stark made me feel quite ashamed for turning my back on my brother so. He is willing to stand by Loki despite his mistakes, and I… wish I could have proven so true.”

Darcy scrunched up her nose. “Why does he care?”

“Ah, of course, you do not know.” Thor exclaimed, his expression brightening into beaming delight. “My brother has finally found his soulmates in the Man of Iron and the Lady Pepper. I suspect that is why you haven’t been greeted by either Stark or Lady Pepper. It seems they have been waiting a long time for Loki to find them.”

Darcy was very glad she was currently sitting down, because it rather felt like the world was spinning around her a bit. “Wait, soulmates? Plural?” She checked.

Some of Thor’s joy dimmed into caution. “Yes, plural. Loki has always had two soulmarks. That is unheard of among Asgardians, and equally uncommon in Jotuns. I understand it is fairly uncommon among humans, too.”

“Most people don’t think it’s _possible_.” Darcy got out, sounding maybe a little strangled.

Thor nodded gravely. “Indeed, this is the attitude I have encountered on the matter. It seems Stark also suffered constant disbelief from his peers, although he had some minor support from his parents, it seems. He called it a family curse, so he, at least, had someone to explain it to him.”

Well, that was… Darcy couldn’t help but picture that blank space on her birth certificate. She thought of her excessive college fund, which would barely be a drop in the ocean of _Tony Stark’s_ wealth. She remembered that car on her sixteenth birthday, expensive and flashy and anonymous. She could _hear_ her mother’s irritated tone as she talked about him. Unconsciously, her left hand came up to twist at her right soulmark bracelet. The odd one. The damaged one.

“Starks have two soulmarks?” She asked, just to be sure.

“That’s what the Man of Iron said, yes.” Thor confirmed, frowning at her. “Lady Darcy, are you quite well? You look very pale.”

“I’m fine.” Darcy said on autopilot. “Just… I mean, holy shit, that must have been hell on Stark, right? And Ms Potts and Loki, too. Growing up with that can’t have been easy at all. Like, seriously, _dude_. People can be little shits even without an excuse. An oddity like that with something seen as so sacred, like soulmarks? Jesus.”

“Indeed. Loki suffered greatly as a child, although I was too blind to see for a very long time.” Thor agreed solemnly. Then he reached out and caught Darcy’s hand. She looked up at him, and he smiled compassionately. “You have a big heart, Darcy Lewis, but you need not hurt for them. They have found each other at last, and there is nothing they cannot face so long as they are together.”

Darcy smiled, charmed by Thor’s earnest faith in happily ever afters. “That is an excellent point.” She agreed. Then she hopped up off her stool. “Right, I’m going to go and grab some pop-tarts. I can tell Jane isn’t going to break for lunch today.” She decided.

“Ooh! Can you-” Thor began, perking up like a puppy.

Darcy laughed and patted his hand. “I’ll make you some too, big guy, I promise.” She assured him, and headed out of the lab. Once she was in the elevator, she let her legs give out on her, and sank to the floor. “JARVIS?”

“Yes, ma’am?” JARVIS replied, cautiously.

“Did you know?” Darcy demanded, staring at her wrists where her soulmarks were hidden by a single layer of soft leather. With slightly shaky fingers, she tugged the bracelets off, so that she could stare at the marks themselves. “Did you know that I have two soulmarks?”

After a painfully long silence that was barely a couple of seconds, JARVIS said “I did.”

“ _Holy shit_ , JARVIS!” Darcy breathed incredulously.

There was a pause. “I can inform Mr Stark that you wish to speak to him, if…”

Darcy thought about that, but her head was spinning, and she wasn’t sure she could manage a coherent conversation just yet. “No, that’s… not yet, J, please? Can you… I mean, can you not tell him just yet? I need to… to figure out what the fuck this even… _Oh my god…_ ” Darcy trailed off helplessly.

“Of course, ma’am.” JARVIS assured her.

Darcy smiled faintly. “Even if he asks? I mean, can you _do_ that? Lie to his face? Isn’t there some sort of code in you that means you can’t do that? Not with him?”

“Technically, I _could_ lie to Mr Stark. In most cases, I _choose_ not to. Even if he _had_ enforced my honesty, your priority level is equal to Mr Stark’s, and therefore if you asked me to keep a secret from him, Miss Lewis, I still could.” JARVIS explained solemnly.

That brought a smile to Darcy’s face. “…You make a pretty awesome brother, J.” She decided.

“…Brother?” JARVIS echoed uncertainly.

“Yeah. I mean, you kinda are, aren’t you? Tony made you, Tony made me. Different method- and _oh my god_ , I am _so_ not thinking about that. But yeah, point, we’re totally sibs. That’s cool.”

JARVIS didn’t seem to know what to do with that. “Thank you, Miss Lewis.” He said eventually. Darcy tipped her head back and smiled at the ceiling. It was vague, though, because her thoughts had already wandered back to the main issue. So many questions that had been bugging her her whole life had been answered all at once. She finally knew who her dad was, and he was genius billionaire superhero. It was kind of like the modern version of a fucking fairytale.

She didn’t really need to ask him why he hadn’t gotten in touch with her. Her mother’s attitude probably meant that even if he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t have gotten past her. The car was sign enough that he’d been thinking of her. At least, she was fairly sure. If it had been an instruction he’d given to JARVIS or Pepper, it probably wouldn’t have been a bright red two-seater convertible.

And it was because of him that she had two soulmarks. Knowing why she had two, even if only partly – because she still desperately wanted to know why _Starks_ had two soulmarks – made her feel a lot better about the whole thing. She wasn’t some random anomaly. There was a _reason_. And he must have warned her mother, because Moira hadn’t been surprised. Of course, Darcy knew full well why her mother hadn’t explained it to her, and that made her a little mad, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about that now, so she put it to the back of her mind.

She was going to have to talk to Tony about this, but she thought it would do her good to take a couple of days to sort it out in her own head. Maybe she could make a list of questions, and just hand it to him. That would save on the awkward ‘I know you know I know’ conversation. In the meantime, she still had a scientist and her godly boyfriend to babysit, she remembered, and she hauled herself up off the floor of the elevator to go fetch them their pop-tarts.

When she got back to the lab, she found Jane elbow deep in analysing the portal device that Loki had built. Apparently, Thor said it greatly resembled the mechanism that activated the rainbow bridge, and hearing that had sent Jane off into a scientific frenzy of science. Darcy fell back into the habit of assisting Jane in her science easily enough, up to and including getting Thor to physically carry Jane out of the lab when midnight hit and she refused to leave.

“It’ll still be there in the morning, Jane, _god_.” Darcy complained as she followed a sullen Jane –whose elbows were propped on Thor’s back so that she could rest her chin in her hands and glare at Darcy – and an amused Thor out of the lab. JARVIS even got the lights for her.

The next day, Darcy honestly expected more of the same. She’d slept late, because she could, but she was sure Jane would be in the lab already, and she probably hadn’t even bothered with a breakfast that was more substantial than coffee. Instead, however, when Darcy headed into the lab she found not Jane, but a cute, rumpled, and very tired looking man with ridiculously messy, curly hair hunched over a microscope.

He looked up when she walked in, and she recognised him. Not only from Thor’s descriptions – since this obviously wasn’t Tony Stark, it had to be Dr Bruce Banner – and Jane’s fangirling, but also… Well, that hair was a dead give-away. This was the man that turned into the Hulk when he got mad.

Darcy suffered a strange moment of disjointed thoughts falling together then. Looking at Dr Banner and recognising him as the Hulk reminded her of watching him on TV, fighting aliens alongside Thor and the other Avengers, of Iron Man falling out of a hole in the sky, and Hulk catching him. It only occurred to her in that moment that that had been _her dad_ , and this man had saved his life.

“Hi!” Darcy greeted enthusiastically, because goddamn it, if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t even have had a _chance_ to get to know her dad. She would have figured it all out a couple of days too late. That would have sucked. “So, quick question, cause sometimes people are like ‘no touchy’; how do you feel about hugs?”

Dr Banner just sort of stared at her. His eyes were so wide behind his glasses that she could see the whites all around his irises – which were a very pretty brown-green sort of colour, now that she was looking – and his mouth was slightly open in shock. It started to dawn on Darcy what that might mean just as Bruce seemed to shake himself, and almost fell off his stool as he tried to stand up. “I- Uh,” he began in a shaking voice, and Darcy _knew_ what he was going to say next and suddenly everything and nothing at all made sense, “I'm sorry, I-” Bruce coughed, edging around her to get to the door without getting within three feet of her. “I have to go.” He finished in a rush, and then he was gone.

Darcy stared after him, trying to process. “What. The fuck?”

“Dr Banner is not always comfortable around people.” JARVIS offered. “His condition makes certain social situations very difficult for him to handle.”

His condition. The Hulk. Darcy’s left hand leapt to her right wrist again, and her thumb rubbed over the leather there. Multiple Personality Disorder. She’d fucking known, hadn’t she? Darcy almost wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to. “J… I think… I think one of my soulmates just totally blew me off.” She said weakly.

“I see.” JARVIS said carefully.

“Oh my _god_ , he took one look at me and fucking _ran_. Like what the fuck? Seriously!” Darcy complained. “I mean, I know there’s obviously a bit of an age gap here. Like… he must be what? Forty? But that’s no reason to just… I don’t have _tentacles,_ you know?!” On saying that, Darcy had a miniature revelation. “Hold the fucking phone. Did he seriously do the whole ‘leaving before he gets left’ thing on me? Is that what this is?”

“That does not seem like an unreasonable conclusion, ma’am.” JARVIS interjected.

“That’s _so_ not cool!” Darcy yelped. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was supposed to be being kind and patient and empathetic. How she was supposed to do that when he wasn’t there for her to be kind and patient and empathetic _at_ , she didn’t know. “Okay, okay. He’s scared. That’s okay. I just need to… Patience. Wait for him to come around, I guess? Work up his nerve? Something like that?” She looked up, hoping JARVIS had something reassuring to say.

“I am perhaps not the best person to consult on the matter of soulmates.” JARVIS offered dryly.

Darcy chuckled helplessly. “Yeah, okay. Could you… could you tell him, J, that I’m… Fuck, I don’t know.” She ran a hand through her hair, dragging it back and away from her face, then just gripping it as she tried to think. “Tell him that I get why he left, but I’m not worried about the Hulk, and I really was serious about that hug, whenever he’s up for it?”

“I shall relay that message to him word for word, ma’am.”

“You’re the best bro ever, J.” Darcy declared, then looked helplessly around the lab. “Holy mother of Thor, everything is happening, like, all at once and I cannot deal. Where’s Jane?” She didn’t care if Jane was in the middle of super important science. She was going to drag her back to Darcy’s apartment, and Jane would listen to her as she bemoaned her fate over hot chocolate and ice-cream. Yeah, ice-cream sounded like the perfect thing after being blown off by her soulmate.

* * *

Darcy did not see hide nor hair of Dr Bruce Banner for the next couple of days, and then, when she did see him, she was a little distracted by both coming face to face with her father for the first time ever, _and_ being told that Agent Coulson wasn’t actually dead. Then Agent Coulson was actually _there_ , and Darcy just had to hug him because she had no idea if he’d even realised that she did kind of like him, and now he _wasn’t dead_ , and that was such a damned relief.

By the time she was over that and had passed Agent Coulson over to Thor’s enthusiastic bear hug, she realised that Bruce was gone. She thought she vaguely remembered him saying something to Coulson while Darcy and Pepper had still been hugging him, but she’d completely missed his exit from the emotionally fraught gathering. She tried not to let it sting, tried to tell herself that it wasn’t necessarily _her_ that he was avoiding, but it didn’t really work.

“You okay there, kiddo?”

Darcy startled, and turned away from staring bemusedly at the elevator to look at Tony Stark, who had his eyebrows raised at her almost warily, like he was expecting her to explode. She chewed on her lip for a moment, trying to figure out how to answer that. “You know? Not really. I mean, all this stuff is happening, right, and it’s supposed to be awesome, because it’s like, all good stuff, you know? Well, mostly good stuff. Except I’m getting, like, totally overwhelmed and my life is spiralling into a giant whirlpool of cray-cray and I don’t know how to handle that because I’m _normal_ , you know?”

“Mm… no. Don’t get it.” Tony decided.

Darcy tried to make her eyebrows do something sceptical and unimpressed, but she wasn’t sure it worked. She checked to make sure everyone else was distracted by Coulson, which they were, so she started to speak, and maybe got a little bit of a rant going. “So, like, first, I get this _sweet_ apartment in _Stark Tower_ , which is great, you know? I love it, by the way.” Tony preened at that. “Except, I have no idea what to _do_ with all that space, man. And then, like, Thor tells me this really sweet story about his baby bro _finally_ finding his soulmates, you know, _plural_ , because one of his soulmates is _Tony Stark_ , and apparently, having two soulmarks is a _Stark family curse_.”

Tony opened his mouth, and said nothing. Then he closed it again. He made a sort of humming “Mm” sound, followed by an awkward clearing of his throat, that Darcy guessed was meant to be confirmation.

“So I freak out a bit, you know, like you do when you realise your dad is _Tony freaking Stark_ , but on the whole, another good thing happened, right? I found my dad, and I can finally say thank you for the car and the college, you know? Thanks, by the way.” Tony blinked rapidly at her, as if she’d started speaking Sindarin at him or something. “And you know, I guess now I know why I was always more interested in taking the TV apart than watching it.”

That put the hint of a grin on Tony’s face. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. Drove my mom up the wall.” Darcy agreed. “And I just… it’s good, but it’s _a lot_ , you know? That’s why I didn’t say anything until now. I needed time to, like, sort it all out in my head and, I don’t know, come to terms with it and shit.”

“Yeah.” Tony said emphatically on an exhale.

That moment of kinship with her dad helped Darcy go on. “So like, while I’m still all processing that, I walk into your lab downstairs, and find out that the guy who _saved my dad’s life_ just the other day is also one of my _soulmates._ Which I learn because he completely blows me off and runs away from me and now he won’t even stick around to say a proper welcome back to the guy who just _came back from the freaking dead_ because he’s avoiding me. Which, like, major suckage, you know? My own _soulmate_ can’t stand to be in the same room as me.”

An odd little silence settled between them, as they watched Pepper guide Coulson down onto the couch and draw him into what looked like a very intense discussion about how he felt. Loki was listening intently, while Thor and Jane leant against each other and muttered quietly amongst themselves. If Darcy knew Jane at all, she was freaking out in her obsessive tell-me-everything way about resurrection actually being a possible thing.

“Bruce is your soulmate?” Tony checked finally.

“Yeah.”

“Huh. And he blew you off?”

“Yup. Took the long way out of the door to avoid so much as brushing against me.”

“And the whole Hulk thing doesn’t make you crap your pants?”

That got Darcy to turn and look at him. “I’ve known my soulmate had split personality since I was sixteen, Tony. So his alter is a little bigger and greener than I was honestly expecting. Big deal. It’s not like the Hulk is some sort of cancerous parasite _attached_ to my soulmate. He’s _part_ of my soulmate. I’ve got _his_ words on my wrist, too. FYI.”

“Good.” Tony grinned at her, and Darcy suddenly had to blink back tears, because she didn’t think she could ever remember a time that someone had looked at her with that much _pride_ in their eyes. Not even her mom, who was always _too_ enthusiastic about Darcy’s triumphs, like she was _trying_ to be proud, but didn’t really understand. This was… she hadn’t even been aiming to make anyone proud, or trying to succeed at something, she’d just been… _herself_.

She hugged him. She couldn’t help it. Tony didn’t seem to know what to do with that, at first, but then he hugged her back. “Would it be super weird if I called you Dad?” Darcy asked.

“Weird? Yes, absolutely. Bad? No, not really.” Tony replied, awkward, but trying so hard to be cavalier about it.

“Okay, Dad.”

“Shit.” Tony muttered, and hugged her tighter.

They actually started spending time together after that, Tony joining Darcy and Jane in the labs the very next day. For the first time in her life, Darcy found herself actually showing off a little bit. The intricacies of the machinery went over her head, but she kept up better than she’d expected. Jane didn’t look very surprised, so Darcy figured she really had known that Darcy had been tinkering with her gadgets since forever.

Bruce was there on the third day, and when he tried to leave, Tony sort of hurled words at him until he stayed. He continued to avoid Darcy, though, despite her repeated attempts to have a conversation with him. Their most successful interaction came at lunch time, when Darcy – on JARVIS’s recommendation – brought Bruce a cup of tea along with Jane and Thor’s pop-tarts and one of Tony’s gross health drinks. He’d looked up at her, tense like a cornered rabbit, but relaxed a little when all she’d done was set the tea down on the desk beside him. “Thank you.” He muttered at the tea.

“Hey, no probs.” Darcy replied, a little more gently than she might usually, because Bruce was still doing an admirable impression of a frightened bunny. “Happy to help.” And she’d left, deciding to quit while she was ahead.

A few days later, and Darcy came into the lab at her usual hour of a little past ten, to find the tension in the lab had ratcheted up another dozen notches with the addition of Loki to their super-scientists club house. She was standing on the opposite side of one of JARVIS’s holographic display tables to Bruce, explaining the portal device to Tony and Jane, who were standing beside her, and diagonally across from her, respectively. She and Bruce were doing that ignoring-each-other-so-carefully-it’s-both-obvious-and-painful thing that Darcy never had much patience for.

And of course, both of them got even more tense when she walked in. “Darcy, kiddo, get over here!” Tony called, shooting her a look that screamed his desperate plea for a rescue. Darcy rather thought he was looking to the wrong person for that, but she joined them around the table anyway and looked up at the projection of a disassembled portal device.

“ _Oh_ , so _that’s_ what that twiddly lever thing does!” Darcy exclaimed, pointing at one of the annotations.

“Twiddly lever thing?” Loki echoed, caught somewhere between pained and amused.

Darcy stuck out her tongue. “I don’t know the technical terms.” She dismissed with a flap of her hand in the air between them.

“We’re working on it.” Tony interjected.

“ _You’re_ working on it.” Darcy corrected. “As long as people know what I’m talking about, I don’t see why I need to over-complicate things with fancy-shmancy techno-babble speak. It’s basically just a form of elitism, you know? Like, by talking all sciency, you’re excluding people who aren’t ‘in the club’, and that’s just, like, cruel.”

“Yes?” Tony agreed, grinning. “We can’t have the uninitiated understanding our top-secret conversations, you heathen!”

“I, uh...” Bruce began, edging away from the table.

“No, no, _nope_.” Tony interrupted. “ _You_ , sir, are going to help us invent _time-travel_ once we’re done with this. You absolutely cannot leave until we fetch a pteranodon egg. I want a Myfanwy.”

“Oh my god, _yes_!” Darcy exclaimed, lifting her hand for a high-five, which Tony returned, while Jane covered her eyes with her hand and Loki pressed a knuckle to her lips to keep herself from laughing. Bruce just shuffled where he stood, his shoulders somewhere around his ears with all the tension in them.

They scienced for a while, which Darcy actually really enjoyed, until Bruce escaped Tony’s clutches and fled the lab. Tony glared after him for a moment before flicking a hand to dismiss the holograms he’d been working with and following. Darcy stared after them, swallowing around a sudden lump in her throat. As if it wasn’t bad enough that her soulmate seemed allergic to her, _and_ that she was driving him away from what was, as far as she could gather, his sanctuary. No, she also had to go and cause tension between him and his best friend, who happened to be her dad.

“My life is a bad soap-opera.” Darcy announced to the air.

“If you are anything like your father, I’m sure you’ll handle it with aplomb.”

Darcy squeaked in surprise and turned to see Loki standing behind her, evidently amused at the way she’d jumped. “Well, yeah, of course I will. I will totally handle it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it, you know? I could go for a little less high drama.”

“I think you’re in the wrong tower for that.” Loki pointed out.

Darcy slumped with a groan. “Ugh, I _know_!” She sighed, and let the mask of melodrama slip away. “I just wish he’d stop running away from me, you know? Like, I get that he’s scared, but… Just _ouch_ , you know? It’s so fucking hypocritical. He’s frightened he’s going to scare me off, so he’s putting me through exactly what he’s trying to avoid? Harsh.”

“You think he’s avoiding you because he’s frightened you’ll be _scared_ of him?” Loki asked.

“Well… yeah…?” Darcy turned to look at her, frowning, and Loki raised an eyebrow at her, patiently – and a little condescendingly – prompting. “You don’t think so?”

“No.” Loki replied with a degree of certainty in her voice that Darcy hadn’t really been expecting. “No, I think he’s afraid of quite the opposite.”

“Like… that I _wouldn’t_ run away from him?” Darcy paraphrased incredulously. Loki dipped her head in affirmation, and Darcy shook her head, struggling to understand. “What the fuck? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Like… the whole _point_ of soulmates is that they’re the people who _fit_ with you, right? So… why would he _not_ want that?”

“Because he’s afraid he’ll break you.”

Darcy’s jaw dropped open. Loki shot her a sideways sardonic look, waiting for her to catch up. “But that…” She began. “No, okay? Like, seriously, what the _fuck_ ? Does he really think his _soulmate_ would be that fragile? Okay, so I know I’m like, physically fragile, and the Hulk probably could snap me in half, but what does he think I’m going to _do_ exactly?! Run up to the Hulk and _taser him_?!”

“I never said it was entirely rational.” Loki pointed out.

Darcy narrowed her eyes at her. “Is that something you worried about?”

Loki blinked, before a grim smile twisted her lips. “A little.”

“Why didn’t you run, then?” Darcy wondered.

Loki laughed at that. “I am a _far_ more selfish creature than Dr Banner. I’ll take whatever I can get away with, and damn the consequences. I suspect I also have a little more faith in the fates than Dr Banner, and I do not believe any soulmate of mine would _let me_ break them. That is precisely _why_ they are my soulmates.”

“ _Exactly_!” Darcy flapped her arms in the air.

“You are remarkably like your father.” Loki mused.

Caught off guard, it took Darcy a moment to respond. Then she smiled, and nudged Loki with her elbow. “Thanks.” Loki gave her fond, but oddly undecipherable look, then went to help Jane put the portal device back together again.

A couple of days later, Tony had JARVIS gather everyone into the communal area in the penthouse for a team bonding movie night. Somehow, she didn’t know how – although she rather suspected some scheme on Tony’s part – she wound up sitting at the end of the couch, with Bruce sandwiched between her and Tony. Bruce looked epically unhappy about it, and Darcy tried very hard not to be hurt by that.

Darcy had always been a very interactive movie watcher, and she didn’t let the tension humming in the air between her and Bruce discourage her from throwing popcorn at the TV when things she didn’t like happened on screen. Once or twice, she thought she caught Bruce almost smiling at her antics, and wondered if maybe this just might work. Then he caught her eye, and looked away sharply, shoulders returning to their hunched position somewhere around his ears.

After a moment to let the sting wear off, Darcy decided stubbornly that she was going to ignore that, and settled deeper into the couch, which _incidentally_ left her half leaning against Bruce, their shoulders pressed together lightly. Bruce went very, very still. Darcy had to resist the urge to hold her breath. He didn’t relax, just stayed stiff an immobile against her until Darcy forgot to pay attention, and went back to mocking the characters’ bad decisions.

The very moment the movie was over – before the final pan out finished and the credits began – Bruce stood and left, his stride a little jerky. Tony pulled a scowly face at his back, then glanced over at Darcy in commiseration. Darcy smiled wryly back and shrugged helplessly.

Bruce was not in the lab the next day, or the day after that. When, on the third day, Darcy headed into the lab, and saw that everyone was there except for Bruce, her patience snapped. She turned right around on her heel, and stalked back out again. “JARVIS, where’s Bruce?” She asked.

“Dr Banner is currently in his apartment, ma’am.” JARVIS replied promptly. “Would you like me to let him know you’ll be dropping by?”

“Hah, no.” Darcy snorted. “No, please don’t, J. I don’t want to give him the chance to run away from me again.” She stated, jabbing irritably at the button for Bruce’s floor. There was a very judgemental silence from JARVIS as the elevator doors closed and began to ascend. “What?” Darcy snapped when she couldn’t take it anymore.

“Forgive me, but I don’t believe your current emotional state will be particularly conducive to rational conversation.” JARVIS informed her.

Darcy opened her mouth to argue, and realised that she’d only be proving his point for him if she did. He’d trapped her neatly, and she couldn’t even resent him for it properly, because she knew he was only trying to help. She let out the breath she’d drawn in preparation to yell at him in a long, slow exhale. “Yeah, fuck it.” She agreed reluctantly. “I’m just so done with this song and dance, J.”

“Understandably, ma’am.” JARVIS assured her.

The elevator dinged softly, and Darcy stepped out to knock on Bruce’s door. She made sure not to bang, like she kind of wanted to, but rapped lightly. Then she waited. After a long moment, she whispered. “Is he coming to the door, J?”

“Yes, ma’am.” JARVIS confirmed, just as Bruce opened the door, and blinked in surprise to see her.

“If you close that door on me, Bruce, I am going to scream.” Darcy warned him, noticing the way his knuckles momentarily whitened on the door, like he was considering doing just that. He froze. Darcy made a quiet, irritated noise in the back of her throat. “Look, I don’t… Can we _talk_ about this? I don’t even know what’s going on, all I have is guess-work. Okay, fairly good guess-work, but I’m not Sherlock Holmes, you know?”

“Do you want to talk, or do you want to yell?” Bruce asked warily.

Darcy nearly screamed. “If you’d deigned to talk to me _twelve days ago_ , I would have been a lot less frustrated, you know?” She pointed out. Bruce’s lips thinned into a line, and Darcy shook her head, dismissing the point. “And anyway, can’t I want to do both?”

“Yes, but if you’re going to yell, this is probably a really bad idea. There’s a reason I’ve been avoiding you, Miss Lewis.” Bruce pointed out.

“My name is _Darcy_. And that is bullshit. I get that you’re like, used to being all lone ranger and shit, but if there’s anyone to take a chance on, wouldn’t it be one of your _soulmates_?” Darcy pressed. “Like, really, I don’t know if you paid attention to my message, but-”

“My soulmate is the _last_ person I want to put at risk.”

“-I knew you had MPD since I was sixteen, and let me tell you- Wait.” Darcy stalled and replayed Bruce’s words. “Bruce, don’t you think that if you could break me I wouldn’t be your soulmate?” She asked, trying for an encouraging smile.

It did not work. Bruce’s eyes flashed green before he closed them. “ _Of course_ I could break you, Lewis. You have _no idea_ how many people _just like you_ that I’ve destroyed. If you make me _jump_ too badly, I could _kill you_. That’s not-” He stopped abruptly and just breathed.

“The Hulk isn’t going to hurt me, Bruce-”

“You. Have no way. Of knowing that.” Bruce enunciated carefully. Then he huffed a laugh that sounded a little too rough to be _just_ his. “You’re definitely a Stark. And that’s another reason this is a terrible idea. I am literally the same age as your father. Doesn’t that-”

“So what?”

“So the balance of power here is very drastically skewed in my favour, and that-” Bruce began.

Darcy rolled her eyes as dramatically as she could. “Except for the fact that you’re too shy to actually use that power. And the last time anyone managed to make me do something I didn’t want to do, I was, like, _seven_. If my mom couldn’t make me go to bed when I didn’t want to, Mean and Green isn’t going to make me do _shit_ if I don’t feel like it.”

Bruce almost smiled, and then his expression crumpled into misery. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Darcy blinked, then scoffed at him. Bruce seemed rather taken aback by that. “You mean you don’t want to _physically_ hurt me.” She pointed out, firm but making sure there was no bite to her tone. “Because you’ve been hurting me since you met me.”

Bruce flinched away from that. Then he swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

All of the fight drained out of Darcy at that, and she smiled sadly. “Thank you, and you’re forgiven.” She told him promptly, which earned her a raised eyebrow and a ghost of a smile. “So, can we talk now?” She asked teasingly, and Bruce snorted.

“Okay.” He sighed.

“So… what do you want?” Darcy asked.

Bruce opened his mouth, stopped, then closed it again. “You first.”

“Well, I’d like to get to know my soulmate. I’d like to spend time with you. I _would_ like to give you that hug at some point, but I can totally respect boundaries, and if that’s not cool then that’s okay. I would _totally_ like to kiss you, too, but again, boundaries, respect, etcetera. I’d like to find our other soulmate together. I’d like to build a life that has the two of you in it. I’d also really like some ice-cream right now.” Darcy rambled.

Bruce just stared at her, his mouth a little agape, for a long moment. Then he ran a faintly shaking hand over his mouth, and smiled a small and horribly pained little smile. “I want the Other Guy to not exist anymore.” He said simply.

Stamping down hard on the desire to shake a proper answer out of him, Darcy drew in a steadying breath. “Well, I figure you’re probably already working on that, being the great big science nerd that you are, and I don’t think I can help much with it. But, as I’ve said before, you know, I don’t actually mind that you’re… more than you in there, you know?”

Bruce shook his head at her, grimacing. “You don’t mind _now_. But what happens when something startles me and I- the Other Guy pays a visit and-”

“Well, apparently, he’s going to ask me if I’d like to smash stuff too, so, you know. That actually sounds fun.” Darcy mused. Bruce stared at her in horror, so she kept talking, hoping to put him at ease. “I wondered for ages, like, if your alter was, I dunno, a kid or something, because the syntax was actually really bad, but Hulk makes total sense. He’s got that whole ‘Hulk smash’ thing.”

“You have…” Bruce choked out. He was going alarmingly pale, and Darcy reached out a hand in a feeble attempt to steady him, but it had the opposite effect. He stumbled back, flinching away from her touch, and she froze cautiously. “Darcy, I am so sorry.” He rasped, his voice strained.

Darcy opened her mouth to ask ‘what the hell?’ but before she could get the first syllable out, the door was being shut in her face. “ _Again_?!” She yelped at the closed door. “We’re doing this _again_?! Oh my god, you _asshole_!” Then she kicked the door for good measure, turned on her heel, and flounced away.

Soulmates vanishing on them seemed to be the theme of the week, because the very next day, Thor returned to Asgard for Loki’s trial, and didn’t come back. Tony explained that it had something to do with Thanos and discussing plans with his parents, but days went by with no sign of him, then weeks, then months.

In all that time, Darcy hadn’t shared more than a handful of words with Bruce either. He was avoiding her with almost religious dedication, and after the initial anger and frustration had worn off, it just left her feeling sad and lonely and abandoned. There was nothing to be done about it, though. She couldn’t convince him to give her a chance when he could barely stand to be in the same room as her for longer than a minute. And honestly, she’d never imagined it would take this much effort just to get her soulmate to _talk_ to her. So when Jane announced her intention to travel to London to study some interesting signals she was picking up there, it didn’t take long for Darcy to decide to go with her.


	2. Bruce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Bruce's head is _not_ a happy place to be. There isn't anything too explicit going on, but there is brief mention made of two suicide attempts and the Hulk hurting innocents. If anyone thinks anything else needs to be warned for, or wants me to put details in the end notes, please let me know, and I will.

_Doctor, thank you for coming._

For a long time, Bruce had thought his soulmark meant he would one day become a Medical Doctor. It wasn’t until he was in high school that he finally realised he didn’t need to study medicine to become a ‘Doctor’, and that he could actually follow his passions. He quickly figured out that he preferred science to any other subject, and there was so much of interest there that he quickly became absorbed in trying a little of everything.

That wasn’t to say that his studies took all of his attention. He dedicated himself to them, but they weren’t always enough to drown out the bullies that, if popular media was anything to go by, were rife in the American schooling system. The general advice that seemed to be common knowledge was ‘tell an adult’ but Bruce honestly mistrusted the idea. What, exactly, were they going to do? Tell the other boys to lay off? By his own observations, adults acted just the same as children, except on a bigger scale. The desperate need to do _something_ kept building, though, but Bruce had no idea what that something was, and was a little afraid to find out what he _might_ do, if pushed.

What he might do turned out to be building a bomb in the chemistry lab during lunch. It wasn’t… _exactly_ an attempt at a homicide-suicide combo, really. He honestly hadn’t been thinking that far ahead, although he did admit that at the time he wouldn’t have _cared_ very much if it _had_ worked. He was just so _angry_ , and before he really knew what he was doing, he’d been too caught up in the intellectual challenge to care much about the aftermath. However, afterwards, he realised he _did_ care. Not, if he was honest, about his own life, but as bad as his bullies had been, they were… well, he hesitated to think ‘kids like him’ because he was fairly sure that there was something not quite right with him, and they were your run of the mill high school bullies, really, nothing particularly psychotic or homicidal about them.

He was expelled, of course. His adoptive parents cried a lot and begged him to talk to them, but there was nothing for him to say. He’d been angry, he hadn’t thought, he was sorry. He enrolled in another school, and managed to test into the year above where he should be, which he was actually glad for. Everyone in his classes were less into high school politics and more focused on getting into a good college. He kept his head down, studied hard, and avoided as much of the human interaction high school tried to force on him as was humanly possible.

One day in the middle of April, when Bruce was getting undressed for a shower before bed, he noticed there was something written on the inside of his right wrist. It took him almost a minute to stop staring, and that was only to look across at his other wrist to check that his soulmark was still there. It was. He turned his head back to the new words scrawled across the _wrong wrist_ :

_Hi! So, quick question, cause sometimes people are like 'no touchy'; how do you feel about hugs?_

Slowly, Bruce sat down on the lip of the shower stall, dressed only in his jeans, and just stared in complete incomprehension at those brand new words. Distantly, he wondered how he felt about hugs. He realised he didn’t really know. He didn’t think he was one of those people who didn’t like to be touched, but he never really seemed to get much out of hugs, either. Maybe it would be different with his soulmates.

Soulmates.

 _Plural_.

Bruce felt a little like he was going to cry, and passed a hand over his eyes as if that would help push the tears back. He didn’t even know why he was upset, or if he was upset. Maybe he was happy? Sometimes people cried if they were really happy, or so he’d heard. He didn’t even know how to begin deciphering the feeling. Instead, he tried to remember if he’d _ever_ heard of someone having more than one soulmate before. He wracked his brains, but even with the epic love-triangles of history, they always came down to someone trying to reject their soulmate or getting married before they met their soulmate, not because they had _two_.

His father knocked on the door. “Bruce, kiddo, you done in there?”

Bruce jumped badly, slipped off the lip of the shower, and landed hard on his butt on the tile floor. “Ouch! No, sorry, I just… I was just…”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine, you just startled me.” Bruce replied. “Sorry, I’ll be out soon.”

His father chuckled. “Take your time. Just remember to clean up after yourself.” Bruce shot an annoyed look at the door that his father of course couldn’t see. Then he dragged himself up off his butt to finish his shower. By the time he was clean he’d gotten over the worst of his alarm and was left in deep confusion, and a hint of wry self-loathing. Because if his second soulmark was actually a soulmark – and he was finding that a little hard to believe – then his other soulmate was seventeen and a half years younger than him. That was a rather dramatic age gap.

He’d heard of worse, of course, everyone had, but it was still… Not great. And the fact that he suddenly had two made him suspect that something was wrong. He had no data to build a theory off as to _why_ he might have two soulmarks, but he couldn’t bring himself to see it as a good thing. It was far more likely that there was something wrong with him – he knew of a couple of illnesses that could mess up your soulmark – than that he, of all people, had somehow miraculously gained a second soulmate.

Researching it turned up nothing except a handful of really weird pieces of threesome porn and some vague references to ancient pantheons of gods with multiple soulmarks. Bruce was really not that into the porn, and the fanciful delusions of ancient cultures bored him stupid, so he gave up looking. Evidently, something was wrong with him, but he’d known that for as long as he could remember, so what was one more symptom, really?

College started that year, and it was there that Bruce met Betty. She was quiet and studious, just like him, and they spent almost a year sharing a table in the library before they ever said a word to one another. Bruce really liked her. She never felt the need to make small talk, but unlike him, she was _not_ shy about speaking her mind when it mattered. She wasn’t his soulmate, her first words to him had been ‘Okay, we’ve been sharing this table for the last year, and I don’t even know your name. That’s just sad.’ which didn’t even begin to match either of his soulmarks, but he kind of wished she was. He thought he could quite happily spend the rest of his life with her quiet company and sharp tongue.

When they left college, they decided to go to Harvard together, if they could both get in. Which they did. Bruce had been a lot more confident of that than Betty had. If there was one place he was more self-assured than she was, it was when it came to intellect. Betty felt like she had something to prove, which left her more frightened of failing than Bruce thought she ought to be, given how unlikely she was to fail.

His years at Harvard were some of the best of his life. Despite everything that was wrong with him, with Betty at his side and some of the most interesting course material he’d ever seen, he actually had fun. They got involved in all sorts of interesting experimental science, their professors were passionate about their subjects and highly engaging, and Betty even dragged him into having some semblance of a social life, which he found he did enjoy in small enough doses.

Then, at some dumb New Year’s party, Betty kissed him. It took him so off guard that he didn’t manage to react until Betty had pulled back, dropping down off her tiptoes to look at him, searching his expression for a cue. “Uh…” That was as much as Bruce managed.

“Not good?” Betty asked, a touch warily.

“No. I mean, yes. I- What?” Bruce stammered. Betty snorted at him, then leaned in to kiss him again. This time, he managed to kiss her back briefly. “I still- Betty, _what_?” Bruce asked again, more desperate for an answer this time.

Betty shrugged. “It seems like maybe this could be a good thing?”

“But… we’re not…” Bruce began, dazed.

“Not soulmates? No, I know.” Betty agreed, pulling a face at him. “Does that bother you?”

Bruce shook his head. “Not really, I can’t really imagine anyone being more right for me than you, anyway, I just thought- Doesn’t it bother _you_?” He asked, and only then noticed the way Betty was smiling at him, like he’d just done or said something really amazing.

“Oh, Bruce.” She murmured fondly, leaning against him. He accepted her weight, still puzzled, and she just shook her head at him. Slowly, her smile dimmed into a more thoughtful expression. “I don’t know when I’m going to meet my soulmate, but I’m not going to stop living my life however I damn well please until they show up. When that happens? I don’t know what we would do then. I wouldn’t want to _not_ get to know my soulmate, but I _certainly_ wouldn’t just dump you and run off, either. My soulmate doesn’t get to define my life.”

Bruce had to smile at that. He really admired that she could say something like that so boldly, and _believe it_ . It wasn’t a common opinion, and for Bruce, who had always felt trapped by his odd – _broken_ – soulmarks, it was like stepping out into the sun for a moment. “Sounds good.” He agreed, and Betty gave him a smug look from under her lashes that was unfairly pretty on her.

So they became a _them_ , which wasn’t all that much different from how they were before. Betty was still fierce, Bruce was still quiet, and they still orbited each other without much fuss. It was just that now, they sometimes had sex, or spent lazy afternoons cuddled on a couch, kissing. It was a little surprising for Bruce to realise that he was actually almost _content_ with his life.

Before he knew it, seven years had gone by and they were staring down the barrel of their final thesis defence, and the scary potential futures that would come after. They both had more than one offer of a job at various research facilities or universities, some even from the same place. After several discussions, they agreed that the best of them was the one from Culver. It gave them the most freedom in their research, and also included part time teaching work, which they were both keen on.

To Culver they went, in the end, and Betty mocked Bruce good-naturedly when he used his spare time to get another PhD. He didn’t mind, he was aware that for most people, having two PhDs wasn’t the benefit it sounded like. But he wasn’t doing it because it looked good on his resume, or because he thought it would impress employers. He just did it because he enjoyed it. He enjoyed their research too, both the science of it, and the fact that what they were doing would – he hoped – _help_ people. Healing nanites would send modern medicine leaping forwards, there were so many potential applications. If they could only get their test subjects to stop _exploding_ , that was.

Bruce should have known that the other shoe was about to drop.

It must have been something of a world record, just how quickly everything went to shit, in such a creative variety of ways. He hurt Betty, he got locked up and experimented on, his birth father showed up and tried to kill Betty, he remembered watching his birth father murder his mother in an attempt to kill Bruce himself, he killed several dozen people breaking out of the government facility, Betty’s father tried his damnedest to kill him, his birth father tried his damnedest to kill him, Bruce wound up killing him right back, and then he wound up on the run. His entire life in shambles because of a lab accident and the botched super-soldier serum he’d inherited from his insane murderer of a father.

The worst part, though, was the way his brain conflated his newly resurfaced memories with the fragments he could recall from when the Other Guy took over. He would dream about watching his father come at him with a knife, watch his mother fling herself between them, hear them argue as if from underwater. The knife would flash, first silver, then red, and Betty would collapse, leaving Bruce to stare up at himself wearing a vicious green snarl and preparing to bring the knife down again.

The first time he actually paid attention after the Other Guy came out to play, he had already been on the run for several months. There was an Incident, and he woke up, as per usual, stark naked and sore all over. Unlike the last few times, where he’d been too dazed, or too scared, or too in-government-clutches to actually take stock of himself, this time he ran a quick self-inventory. He saw what he expected to see, no injuries, even scars from the last few months gone and replaced with fresh skin. Everything was in order, except his soulmarks.

They were broken. Again. There was a shadow there now, almost a smudge, indistinct grey marks behind and between the black letters. They blurred and distorted the soulmarks, not to the point they couldn’t be read, but still enough to make it difficult to decipher if you didn’t know what was there.

In the end, he told himself it didn’t matter. After what happened to Betty, he wasn’t going to risk anyone else that way. He had no idea who his soulmates might be, but if they really were the perfect people for him, they would be the _last_ people he should be anywhere near. He’d hurt them. He’d _kill_ them. It was in his stupid, warped, super-soldier-serum tainted DNA. And maybe fate or god or the chemicals in his body knew that. Maybe that’s why the marks were blurring, trying to erase themselves before he could get two amazing people killed.

Those thoughts ate away at him, consumed him, quietly destroyed him from the inside out. At a particularly low ebb, he shot himself, and woke up in a different country with the worst headache he’d ever had and the knowledge sitting heavy in his chest that there was no escaping this hell. He would have to live out this life, whether he wanted to or not, because the Other Guy wasn’t going to let him go.

It took him several more weeks before the paralysing hopelessness gave way to resolve. If there was no way out, then he was going to do the best he could with what he had. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get him through each day. He travelled the world, never staying in one place for too long, mostly plying trade as an unlicensed doctor. He knew enough from his and Betty’s work on healing nanties that he did more good than harm. He never asked for payment, but most of his patients or their families offered. He found it hard to accept money, but was… if not happy, then at least _willing_ to accept payment in trade, things like food or shelter or forged papers to help him over the next border.

The first few years of that, he had an Incident every month or so, sometimes more. It was difficult, keeping his emotions in check when he passed through whole villages that were starving, when he helped rape victims with back-alley abortions, when he treated a kid for back problems they’d got while working and knew they weren’t going to stop – _couldn’t_ stop – and his help only made a couple of months of difference. He’d bear it as long as he could, until something tiny provoked him past the point of sanity, and then everything was green with flashes of red and a booming drumbeat in his ears punctuated by screams.

After a while, it got easier to wrestle the monster back. He started learning breathing techniques and visualisation exercises and mental tricks to keep his emotions steady, to keep his heart-rate down. It wasn’t perfect, but it was getting closer to being manageable.

All through that, he was constantly aware of the American army dogging his steps. General Ross was of course driving the manhunt for him, and every now and then he would pop up, and the Other Guy would take over, and Bruce would wake up wishing the General had managed to kill him this time. He knew, of course, that Ross would much rather capture him and experiment on him, but Bruce thought of more men like him, like his father, and spent the next half hour on his knees over a toilet, throwing up what felt like all the acid in his stomach. So he kept running. And running. And running.

* * *

Bruce travelled the globe, mostly illegally, for years. He wandered across Europe, through the Middle East, and into Asia. He spent a long time in the wilds of Russia, refused to linger in China, and had to tear himself away from India. He caught a ship across to Africa, and spent the whole journey terrified he was going to have an incident and sink the ship. After traversing what felt like the entire continent, Bruce reluctantly accepted the need for another ship, and slipped into South America on a cargo ship ferrying black market diamonds.

Within weeks, he had wandered into the path of a group of scientists from Britain who were doing a study on the scientific uses of various rare plants. He knew he should walk away – they didn’t need him and there were people out there he could actually help – but the siren call of scientific discovery caught him and held him. He could almost have been back on one of the field trips he went on at Harvard, surrounded by eager peers and loosing himself in the puzzle of how the world fit together.

The only thing missing was Betty. Every time he thought of her, the hurt wormed its way a little deeper, and even though he always breathed his way through it, even though he always talked himself away from it, the hurt became resentment and the resentment became anger.

He should have known it would happen, he _had_ known it would happen, but he’d let himself get complacent anyway. He didn’t even know what destruction he’d left in his wake, but he was pretty sure from the flashes he could remember that those enthusiastic young scientists weren’t going to get to present their research. Worse – and god, the fact that there was a worse ate at him every damned second of the day – he had lost his peace of mind. Where before he’d had resignation and a sense of purpose, he was now filled with bitterness and resentment.

He started looking for a cure. It wasn’t deliberate at first, just some scribbled notes in a half ruined notebook he’d picked up, some thoughts about the interplay between the super-soldier-serum, the nanites, and the gamma radiation. Half a notebook became two, became four, became ten and a wall of newspaper articles and scribbled equations that he lost the next time he had to run. He bartered and traded his services until he could buy himself a clunky old laptop, encrypted all his data and made copies.

One thing led to another, and soon he found himself back at Culver.

Back near Betty.

He tried to avoid her, he really did, but in the end, she chased him down anyway. “Bruce, for god’s sake, I want to help you!” She insisted, right there in the middle of the street in the pouring rain.

“Betty…” Bruce sighed, shaking his head. “You don’t- You have a _life_ , Betty, I’ve followed your work, you’re doing amazing things, and you’ve found your soulmate. You shouldn’t throw that all away for someone like me.”

“You’re right.” Betty agreed coolly. Bruce had a moment where relief and hurt warred inside him, before he shut that down quickly and breathed through it. “I’ve got a job I love, and a good man as my soulmate, and a life I’m proud of. I would be a lot less proud of it if I let one of my oldest friends suffer on his own just to keep my own little world out of harm’s way. If Len is really, truly, genuinely my soulmate, he will understand. If Culver recognises the good work I’m doing, I won’t lose my job for helping you, and if I do, it’s their goddamned loss. And if I get hurt again, well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.” She concluded firmly. “Your demons don’t scare me, Bruce.”

“They should. _He_ should.” Bruce insisted, squeezing his eyes shut so that he didn’t have to see the blazing, confident look on Betty’s face. She was going to help him, and he was going to let her, he knew that. He’d always been terrible at saying no to Betty.

She did help him, and she got hurt.

The worst part, Bruce decided, hiding away in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, was that he could _remember_. At first, the Other Guy’s memories were no more than fragments, bare scraps of impressions that shattered in his grasp if he held them too tight. Over time, though, they became clearer, more put together. That last time, fighting against the Abomination, Bruce could remember several moments in startling clarity. Betty’s theory that he could control it, that he could learn to harness the Other Guy, didn’t seem so far-fetched in light of that.

That thought was more scary than he liked to think about.

He tried, anyway. He liked to think he made some progress, maybe. He went back to playing the role of a wandering doctor, because that, at least, was a skill he could be proud of, that he could help people _without_ hurting them. He zigzagged across the globe in order to stay ahead of anyone that might be trying to find him, but before long he found himself back in India. He promised himself he would move on eventually, but he knew he was lying to himself. He hadn’t had an involuntary incident since the fight with the Abomination, and he suspected he was going to stay in India until something managed to break his streak, and he was _forced_ to flee.

He never got to find out how long he would last. SHIELD found him, and they sent some tiny, pretty, terrified, _breakable_ woman to bring him in. Bruce wasn’t sure if that was a genius move, or utterly, unforgivably stupid. Since it worked, and he didn’t actually break her, he reluctantly had to admit it was probably the former. That, and the knowledge that SHIELD had been aware of his location for months, possibly years, and hadn’t hunted him down like an animal made him curious. The fact that the only reason they’d come for him now was not because of the Other Guy, but because they thought he – _Dr. Bruce Banner_ – could help them save people, save the _world_ , made him… cautiously hopeful.

Of course, that they asked for him in the same breath they asked for Captain America didn’t exactly bolster his confidence any, but Steve was surprisingly nice for a symbol of imperialistic patriotism. The reveal of the Helicarrier’s true nature was another blow at his already tenuous hopes, but he clung to them all the same. He was so very tired, after all, of running and never stopping and being so damnably alone. It ached in a way he couldn’t stop, and he wanted to believe that SHIELD might be safe for him.

Natasha led them to the bridge, and Bruce did his best to stay out of the way as SHIELD got their ridiculous invisible flying headquarters in the air. The bridge was a hive of efficiently bustling people, and it made Bruce feel edgy, being surrounded by this many fragile people and all their noise and presence, so he hovered and stuck to the walls as much as he could.

Then Director Nick Fury approached him and held out a hand to Bruce with nothing but respect in his eyes as he said, “Doctor, thank you for coming.”

Bruce’s heart stuttered. His lungs froze. His hands shook. Something like knowing amusement ticked at the corner of Nick’s mouth. _Oh_ , Bruce thought. Hope clawed its way back to life in his chest, tearing at his insides. Because if there was anyone in the whole world that might be able to survive the Other Guy, to survive _Bruce_ , surely it would be this man. The Director of SHIELD, standing there with only one eye and still wearing his power and authority like a favoured jumper.

But something else was fighting its way to the surface in tandem with the hope that was so powerful it _hurt._ Bruce really didn’t want to test that hope so soon, so he steadied his breathing and he calmed his turbulent emotions. He shook the offered hand, knowing that Nick must be able to feel the way his fingers were trembling. He managed a smile, even though it felt strained and more confused than honest. “Thanks for asking nicely.” He forced himself to say, because it was the closest he could get to expressing anything of what he was really thinking.

The way Nick looked at him suggested he heard all of the things Bruce wasn’t saying. Heard and _understood_. It made his breath catch, and he had to clear his throat and grasp desperately for something else to say, some distraction he could focus on to keep from losing himself to his stupid, wayward emotions. If this was what he was reduced to just by meeting his soulmate, then his decision to avoid them still stood, despite finding out that one of them was the Director of SHIELD. “So, uh, how long am I staying?” He asked.

“Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you’re in the wind.” Nick assured him.

This man was far too good to be true. Bruce told himself sternly that it was probably all lies, but his wrist itched as if to tell him that it was almost certainly truth. He refused to acknowledge that, or any of the rest of it, and asked about the Tesseract. Intellectual pursuits were safe, he was safest when his mind was focused on a problem, and he could block out all his volatile emotions in favour of analytical, rational, logical thought.

He tried not to look directly at Nick, because whenever their gazes met, there was that inexplicable depth of understanding and respect in Nick’s eye, and Bruce’s carefully assembled defences immediately started to crumble. It put that tremor in his hands and made him want to laugh at the absurdity of it all because if he didn’t he might cry. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d cried.

Except he could. He remembered it in flashes of fragments, snapshots of wailing like the child he was as a knife gleamed silver and bloody. He tried to imagine Nick in his mother’s place – in Betty’s place – and the only thing he could picture was his father winding up as the one dead on the floor. _Himself_ winding up dead on the floor, before Nick would ever let Bruce kill him.

He was stupidly grateful for the excuse to retreat into a lab as he tried to sort himself out. Unfortunately, it was Natasha – skittish, breakable Natasha – who Nick had guide him to his lab, and Bruce had to fight down the urge to turn on his heel and shake the man and demand to know what the hell he was thinking, throwing him at someone who was so obviously terrified of him. If he did that though, he knew the Other Guy wouldn’t stop at just shaking him, and that was just unacceptable.

“Are you alright there, Doc?” Natasha asked cautiously.

The Other Guy was always a consistent rumble in the back of his mind, ticking over in standby, never gone, always ready to roar to life at the drop of a hat, and nothing made that dull roar louder than fear. Bruce wrestled it down and bottled it up, and mustered up a wan smile for the poor woman. “As I’ll ever be, Agent Romanoff.” He informed her dryly, and she nodded her acceptance of that side-step of an answer. She didn’t speak again until they reached his new lab, and then it was only to indicate they were there. Then she left as quickly as was socially polite, and Bruce threw himself into the work with a desperate sort of gratitude.

Then he met Tony, and found an almost instant connection the likes of which he hadn’t felt since Betty. Not soulmates, but maybe something more meaningful for all that it wasn’t ordained by fate. It was exhilarating in a way that didn’t feel threatening. Tony pushed, but only until he pushed back, and then he’d grin, brilliant and playful, and back off for a while. It wasn’t that he wasn’t frightened of the Other Guy, but his response to fear seemed to be to open his arms and invite it in.

Then everything went to hell. Bruce remembered the explosion, remembered Natasha’s frightened face, and then it was nothing but green and dark and a pounding drumbeat until he came to in a wrecked warehouse. He didn’t need more memory than that, though, to know that he had been hopelessly naive when he’d wondered if he might be able to have something good in his life without the Other Guy destroying it. He ought to go back to Kolkata, even if Director Fury was less inclined to let him wander about freely now, that way he wouldn’t hurt anybody, wouldn’t _disappoint_ anybody.

It was the thought of Tony – not Director Fury – that stopped him. Tony, who had been so convinced that the Other Guy wasn’t a mindless beast of destruction, but something that could be used, like the Arc Reactor, for good. He thought of Loki, using Tony’s Arc Reactor to bring an alien army to earth they way Ross had wanted to use the Other Guy, and decided that he couldn’t, in good conscience, leave Tony to handle that all on his own.

He wandered into a war-zone where he expected New York to be, and let the Other Guy out to play. He remembered crushing the leviathan as clear as if it had been his own memory, only tinged with green around the edges. The green bled in further the longer the Other Guy was in control, fuzzing the timeline and obscuring moments, but Bruce still had clear memories of Captain America telling him to smash, of being shot at, bright flashes of lightning, and then punching Thor in the middle of Grand Central Station, of smashing Loki into the floor of Tony’s penthouse, of catching Iron Man as he fell from a hole in the sky.

Waking up in Tony’s penthouse with said man standing over him with a grin and a tumbler of scotch in each hand was enough to make him grin right back, despite the post-incident ache in every muscle in his body. Tony offered him one of the glasses of scotch, and Bruce accepted it. As he handed it over, Tony’s eyes caught on Bruce’s wrists, and he winced. “You probably want to cover that up.” He remarked, and Bruce realised one of his soulmarks – still illegible in the aftermath of his transformation – was showing.

“Uh, yeah. Thanks. And… pants, too, please…” Bruce agreed, setting the scotch down and curling his hands into his abdomen as casually as he could, hoping against hope that no one noticed the _other_ illegible smudge on his right wrist.

Tony blinked. “Eh, if you _insist_.” He groused, but fetched a spare set of soulmark bracelets and pair of pants without any real protest. They ate, they slept, and then it was time to send Loki home. Only Tony seemed to have different ideas. There was a manic sort of energy about him when he arrived, and his demands to talk to Loki were impatient and snappish.

Everything spiralled into insanity from there, and Bruce was content to stand back and watch passively until Tony said those three innocuous, _world-altering_ words. “Our other soulmate” he said to Loki, delighted and in love and completely ignoring the fact that what he was saying went against everything everyone had been taught about soulmates. No one else seemed to want to ask, but Bruce couldn’t not, because he had an impossible mark on his right wrist, and here was someone who might – just _might_ – have answers.

Apparently, it was a Stark thing.

A _Stark thing_. But Bruce knew Tony was not his soulmate, and he didn’t know of any other Starks. Most everyone in America knew that Tony was an only child and that Howard had been an only child, and if anyone had traced the family further back than that, Bruce had never heard about it. He caught himself fiddling with his right soulmark bracelet and forced himself to stop, to tune back into the conversation and think about something else, because he didn’t actually want to think about his unknown soulmate.

He couldn’t not, though, and the next week passed in a daze. Tony vanished into his penthouse, and Bruce haunted the labs. He tried not to think too hard about anything, because his entire life felt fragile, as though if he so much as examined it too closely, it would shatter, but his worries nagged in the back of his mind, never gone. He worried about his soulmate, he worried about staying somewhere as heavily populated as New York, he worried about SHIELD hovering over his shoulder.

He threw himself into wormhole theory to distract himself, studying the portal device and reading up on science journals well into the night to keep his thoughts from drowning him. And then it happened, right when he thought he was maybe starting to get a little bit of equilibrium back. A very pretty young woman – brunette, with glasses, lips painted hotrod red – walked in and paused to stare at him, before smiling and saying, “Hi! So, quick question, cause sometimes people are like ‘no touchy’; how do you feel about hugs?”

Bruce’s heart leapt into his throat and started racing. The Other Guy surged, and Bruce forced himself to breathe evenly through the adrenaline spike, even though he couldn’t take his eyes off the woman. She looked so young; bright-eyed and vibrant. Twenty-five, his brain supplied, and Bruce hadn’t even realised he’d been doing the maths, she had just turned twenty-five. Somehow, Bruce doubted she was some distant cousin of Tony’s, given that he could see the resemblance in the shape of her eyes and her ears and her chin. She was either Tony’s daughter or his sister, and Bruce couldn’t even begin to try and work out which was more likely.

He stammered out something he hoped was an excuse, but there was a drumbeat pounding in his ears, and a green haze beginning to cloud the edges of his vision, and he didn’t have the attention to spare for what inane things might be coming out of his mouth. Then he fled, before his rotten, twisted up, monstrous soul could hurt her.

* * *

For some reason, Tony seemed to think it was a good idea to bring Loki into the lab. Bruce understood that Loki was his soulmate, and that they were still in a sort of honeymoon phase, giddy with having found each other after nearly twenty years, but the Other Guy was a lot louder in the back of his mind whenever Loki was around. Of course, then _Bruce’s soulmate_ had to walk in.

Tony called her Darcy. Tony called her ‘kiddo’. And Darcy filled the air around them with words and enthusiasm as if there was nothing wrong with standing next to a monster. She was overwhelming, and terrifying, because even in a few short minutes, Bruce could see in her the same charisma and daring love of life that Tony had in spades. The same vivacity that had Tony poking and prodding Bruce without a care, and while in Tony it was scary but endearing, the idea of enduring it from Darcy made him panic. And fear made him angry, and anger woke the Other Guy.

After putting up with the increasing tension for a while, for Tony’s sake if nothing else, Bruce decided that he _had_ to leave, or risk having an incident and ruining everything. He measured his breathing as he walked towards the elevator. He’d just stepped inside and asked JARVIS to take him back to his own floor when Tony joined him. Bruce tensed up, because the idea of having an incident in an elevator was unpleasant, but having an incident in an elevator _with Tony inside_ was too awful to contemplate.

Thankfully, Tony seemed to pick up on the ‘DO NOT’ vibes Bruce was projecting, because he didn’t say a word until the elevator had deposited them in front of Bruce’s apartment, and Bruce had walked inside, leaving the door open behind him only because he knew closing it wouldn’t keep a determined Tony Stark out. It _was_ his tower, after all.

“Look.” Tony began, and then stopped. “Darcy told me you’re her soulmate.”

Bruce nodded slowly. “One of them.” He acknowledged, giving Tony a wary side-ways look out of the corner of his eye. “You called her ‘kiddo’, so I’m going to guess daughter, not half-sister?” He added, in the vain hope of distracting Tony.

Tony pulled a face. “Yeah. I wish I could say that a half-sister wasn’t a possibility, but…” He shrugged, his expression going from awkward to bitter. “Howard.” He offered by way of an explanation. Bruce just nodded and decided not to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

“You were young. Seventeen, when she was born.” Bruce murmured, rubbing a thumb over his soulmark, under his bracelet.

At that, the discomfort cleared off Tony’s face. “Just barely.” He shrugged. “It was graduation night. I wanted to celebrate. Actually thought Moira might have been my soulmate for about twenty seconds.” He snorted and shook his head. “Speaking of soulmates…” He added pointedly, and Bruce looked away sharply, which earned him an exasperated sigh.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Tony.” Bruce said, although he didn’t expect it to work.

Tony hummed, then mimed throwing something over his shoulder. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess this is because of the Hulk?” He prompted. Bruce shot him a dryly humorous look. “Just a wild guess.” Tony added, with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You know she doesn’t care, right? That you turn mean and green sometimes?”

“ _I_ care, Tony.” Bruce replied.

“Pushing her away isn’t going to get rid of the Hulk.” Tony pointed out.

“But it keeps her out of harm’s way!” Bruce retorted, frustrated.

Tony scoffed. “Bullshit. She managed to _taze the God of Thunder_ without any input from you, or me, or the Hulk. She’s going to be in danger as long as she’s following Jane around, she’s going to be in danger just walking down the street in a city like New York.”

Bruce gritted his teeth and focused on his breathing. “It’s not as if I don’t know I’m being selfish, Tony.” He said eventually. “But I- I’ve already nearly killed one person I- and I _can’t_ , Tony, I just- I _can’t_ live with that. Don’t ask me to live with that.”

“You’re really not giving yourself enough credit here, Bruce.” Tony replied, scratching at his forehead before scrubbing a hand through his hair. Bruce had seen Darcy do the same thing earlier, and the realisation hurt for some reason. “I’m not saying the Hulk is a fluffy bunny and wouldn’t hurt a fly, but… you managed to differentiate between friend and foe in the battle, and you _saved my life_ out there. There’s no guarantee that you’re going to hurt her-”

“There’s no guarantee that I _won’t_!”

“There’s _never_ a guarantee that you won’t, Hulk or not! Everyone has to deal with the idea that letting someone in means giving them the power to hurt you, and out of everyone in the whole wide world, Darcy is one of the ones _meant for you_ . Don’t you think that’s _worth_ taking a risk on?”

“No.” Bruce replied at once, painfully honest. Tony looked floored, and Bruce laughed without humour. “Why are you encouraging this, Tony? She’s your _daughter_ , you should be telling me to stay the hell away from her!”

Tony pulled a face. “Okay, for one thing, she only met me, like, a week ago, so I don’t think I actually have any right to go around threatening her prospective boyfriends. Or girlfriends. Or datemates. For another thing, even if I was the sort of over-protective asshole who would deny her her agency that way, why would I want to scare _you_ off?”

Bruce rolled his eyes and shook his head. To anyone else, he would answer at once with a reference to the Other Guy, but he knew that Tony would wave that off as if it was irrelevant. “Maybe because I’m _older than her father_? Who happens to be my _best friend_?”

Tony beamed at him, looking delighted. “Aw, I love you too, Brucie-bear.” Bruce gave a sigh that had just a hint of a growl behind it. Tony, who wasn’t as oblivious as he pretended to be, caught the warning sign and moved swiftly on. “Which is kind of my point. I know you, I like you, I _approve_.”

“What idiot would approve of _the Hulk_ dating their daughter?” Bruce muttered.

“What idiot _wouldn’t_ approve?” Tony retorted.

“Tony-”

“No, listen.” Tony interrupted, suddenly serious. “Putting aside the fact that I think you’re way over-reacting about the Hulk; if you’re right, and he is out of control, I still wouldn’t tell you to get lost. I might build you a hulk-proof bunker – which I’m going to do anyway, because I’m just nice like that – but I wouldn’t tell you to stay away from her.”

“Why _not_?” Bruce demanded.

“You’re her _soulmate_.” Tony replied, earnest.

Bruce flinched. His tenuous grasp on the Other Guy began to slip, and he pressed a hand over his eyes as if that might help. “Tony, you need to leave.” He managed to say, voice shaking with strain and something else a lot more ominous.

“Hmm… nah.” Tony decided. Bruce dragged his hand down his face to look up at Tony. He honestly expected the man to flinch at the sight of what was sure must be luminous green eyes, but of course – _of course_ – he didn’t. “We can put the conversation on hold, if you need to breathe for a while, but I’m not going to just _leave_. You’ve got this.”

The cavalier confidence in that last sentence was almost too much. Bruce crumpled, folding down into a ball on the floor as if physically making himself smaller might help hold the Other Guy back. It wouldn’t, he knew it wouldn’t, but he did it anyway. Then he choked out a sick laugh that had far too much gravel in it for it to be his alone. “This- _This_ is why, Tony…” He managed to say, and his voice rasped in his throat, coming out a growl.

“You’re not going to scare her off, Bruce-” Tony began.

“ _I know_!” Bruce roared, and then immediately flinched back from his own loss of temper. He lost his balance and toppled off his heels and onto his ass. He pressed his hands over his face and tried to conjure up a peaceful image. It was hard. His mind flickered to a lab, but that made him think of Darcy, who was probably still in the lab downstairs. He forced himself to think of India instead, but that made him think of Director Fury, who had known where he was and _let him be_. His mind supplied an image of a rocky desert, moss and lichen and cacti flourishing in the harsh environment, but he shied away from that before he could be reminded of anything at all.

Suddenly, the room was full of the sounds of the ocean, the gentle hush of waves against sand and the distant cries of seagulls. An image to match formed in Bruce’s mind, and he held onto it as he breathed, slow and deep from his diaphragm and longer on the exhale to trick his body into relaxing, just like he’d been taught. He fought to recall the feeling of sand between his toes, and wavelets lapping around his ankles. He imagined a sunset turning the sky pink and orange, the smell of salt and fish and seaweed on a brisk wind that tugged his hair. He focused on building the scene in as much detail as he could, and refused to entertain any other thought.

Slowly, the howling in his head subsided, the burn in his blood faded, and he was left feeling hollow, wrung out, and exhausted. There was an itch behind his eyes like he wanted to cry, but he didn’t have the energy for it. Carefully, he opened his eyes, and saw that Tony was _still there_ , like an idiot, and _smiling_ , like an asshole. The sound of waves still filled the room, and Bruce smiled a little himself when he realised who must have been responsible. “Thank you, JARVIS.”

“Happy to be of service, Dr Banner.” JARVIS replied promptly.

“See?” Tony said brightly, spreading his hands. “It’s not-”

“Don’t.” Bruce warned, his voice as hard and as sharp as he could make it. Tony’s teeth clicked as he snapped his mouth shut, more in surprise than because he actually meant to obey, Bruce suspected. But then he smirked, amused and impressed and a bit smug, and pointedly kept silent. Bruce breathed deeply, and listened to the waves for a moment. “Darcy is a lot like you.” He began evenly. When Tony opened his mouth, Bruce glared, and Tony shut it again, waving a vaguely mocking hand in the air to tell him to go on. “She’s… fearless.”

“That’s my girl.” Tony said, as though he was so fiercely proud of her that he just couldn’t stop himself. Bruce breathed through the pang that sent through him, a blow from so many different angles it was hard to count. The desire to have _had_ a father like that, the desire to _be_ a father like that, the desire to be _something_ enough to Darcy that he could be proud of her too…

“She would stay. If I let her, she would _stay_ , and maybe I can calm myself most of the time, maybe I can hold the Other Guy back for a while, but one day, it wouldn’t be enough, and _she would stay_.” Bruce explained, closing his eyes and just _breathing_ for a moment, thinking of a beach to avoid thinking about blood on a knife and brown hair spilling out across the floor. “If there’s anyone in the world I don’t want to do that to, it’s _her_.”

Silence met his words, for a surprisingly long time, but then Tony huffed. “Isn’t that her choice?”

“It’s mine, too.” Bruce replied, finding a sense of true calm at last.

Tony sighed again. “Well… I still think you’re being stupid, but… you’re not wrong, I guess.” Bruce opened his eyes to smile wryly at Tony, who pulled a face back, and the last of the tension in the room drained reluctantly away.

Bruce had stupidly thought that would be the end of it. That Tony would let it go and respect Bruce’s choices, even if he didn’t really understand them. But no. Bruce had showed up to Tony’s ridiculous ‘movie night’ idea only to find himself sandwiched between the two Starks, both of whom seemed to want to pretend it was a complete mystery how this had happened. It was torture, sitting pressed up against Darcy, shoulder-to-shoulder, with the smell of her shampoo and popcorn in his nose, and the Other Guy grumbling restlessly in the back of his mind.

He left as soon as he could, and avoided the labs entirely for the next few days, doing his best to stay away from Darcy _and_ Tony. He should have known that wouldn’t work either. He should have known Darcy was as tenacious as her father, too, and that she’d come find him eventually. But he could never have _dreamed_ she would tell him… _that_.

“Well, apparently, he’s going to ask me if I’d like to smash stuff too, so, you know.” Darcy said flippantly. There was a sudden rushing in Bruce’s ears, a surge of vertigo washed over him, and he locked his knees to keep from staggering. Darcy was still talking, her lips were still moving, but Bruce couldn’t hear her over the pounding of his own pulse – too fast, far too fast – in his ears. She had… That made it sound like she had _the Other Guy’s_ words on her wrist, too.

“You have…” Bruce mumbled through numb lips, and Darcy blinked at him and _didn’t contradict him_. Bile surged up the back of his throat, because the implications of that- He’d always known that there was something wrong with him, of course, but he’d still thought that he’d _created_ the monster, like Frankenstein. In his pride, in his _apathy_ , he’d transgressed, and the result was a cancerous tumour attached to his soul.

But if Darcy had words from the Other Guy on her wrist – and he remembered her saying something about that, about knowing he’d had Multiple Personality Disorder for a long time – then the Other Guy wasn’t really the Other Guy. He was Bruce. He’d _always been there_ , a part of Bruce’s soul; he was just a little more defined now. All those stupid comforting platitudes, that he was better than his father, because he might be a monster, but at least he could keep the monster contained, seemed like the worst sort of hubris now.

And Darcy had that monster’s words – Bruce’s words – on her wrist, on her _soul_. He’d done that to her, just by being alive, by being born with tainted genes, he’d attached his blighted soul to her beautiful one, and now the Hulk wouldn’t even let him take it back. He was stuck, and she was stuck with him, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

And then she reached out to _touch_ him, like he wasn’t poison, like he wasn’t the biggest threat to her, like he wasn’t far too damaged for the likes of her. Like she _cared_. His mother had cared, too, had loved her husband and their soulmarks, and that hadn’t stopped her from dying at his hands. And Bruce was just the same, the same wreck of a human being, unnaturally warped to the point that it broke something fundamental in the psyche, except where his father had made himself that way with his experiments with the super-soldier serum, Bruce had just been _born_ broken.

“Darcy,” he choked out, backing away and feeling the world tilt unnervingly beneath his feet. “I am so sorry.” He managed to get out. He saw incomprehension flash across her face before he shut the door, and crumpled to his knees, pressing his too-hot forehead to the cold wood of the door.

She yelled, and screamed, and kicked the door. The wood juddered against Bruce’s skin, and the Other Guy- the _Hulk_ surged under Bruce’s skin. For the first time, now that Bruce truly understood, and knew what to look for, he noticed the way the Hulk wasn’t just the rumble of a distant thunderstorm in his mind, but that he had his own emotions, _Bruce’s_ emotions. The surge in his blood wasn’t some alien force taking over his body. It was _indignation_ , and _outrage_ , and _jealousy_. It was _Bruce_.

“No.” He whispered, and it came out a growl.

He tried to calm down, to breathe, to listen to the sounds of the ocean that JARVIS was playing for him, but he could feel himself slipping. Then it just became a fight to hold on for as long as possible, to give Darcy enough time to get as far away as she could before he lost it. He tried to swear, but it came out as a wordless roar, and the world turned green and hazy.

Something splintered in his hand, a table shattered under his fist, the soft squishy armchair Tony had given him went flying through the air at his kick, with enough force to shatter the bulletproof window on one wall. Wind howled, and the Hulk howled right back, furious with the wind and the world and his own damned self.

There was a flash of light, and the Hulk rounded on it, swiping through the air in a mindless temper. The Puny God ducked, and stayed in a crouch, eyeing the room and the Hulk with a tense readiness that edged a little too close to fear for the Hulk’s peace of mind. Fear. Why was everyone so bloody afraid? Afraid of _him_ , when they were the ones that _hurt_ him and twisted him up inside and were such _monsters_ under their skin. Like this creature, wearing a human face when he was ice and fire and poison underneath. _Liar_. And he looked at the Hulk like _he_ was the monster. Like _he_ was the scariest one in the room.

Well. Now, he _was_.

He smashed a fist down towards the Puny God, but with another flash, he was gone. Furious, the Hulk roared, and swung around, searching for his prey. Another flash, and there he was, standing in the middle of the kitchen. “Dr Banner.” The Puny God said calmly.

The Hulk _snarled._ That was _not_ his name, he was _not_ that small, weak, helpless, stupid, _frightened_ creature that locked him away and kept him caged and played that _he_ was somehow better than any of the other monsters that had trapped them and caged them and _hurt them_. He lunged, crashing through counters and a table and grabbing for the Puny God. He’d smashed him once before and he’d smash him again. Except he spun out of reach, his hands glowed, and then flung that light at the Hulk. He raised an arm to protect his eyes from the glare, and the light struck.

 _Pain_. Something under his skin, twisting through his blood, into his bones, and _deeper_ , down to the place where little Robert Bruce Banner liked to hide when the world got too much and he needed the Hulk to protect him. The Hulk roared, lurching backwards, then throwing himself forwards at the _creature_ that had done this to him. The Puny God danced backwards out of his reach, but the Hulk grabbed again, desperate rage lending him speed and pain lending him strength. He smacked the Puny God, backhanding him through the wall, and he bellowed in triumph.

The light twisting through his soul slipped, grasped at but couldn’t hold the quivering ball that was Hulk’s rational side, and fizzled out, leaving only a raw ache that was quickly subsumed by fresh vitality. Grinning viciously, the Hulk stomped towards the hole in the wall, intent on crushing his prey so thoroughly this time that he’d _never_ come back to bother them again.

On reaching the hall, the Hulk found that the Puny God had an ally now; the other supposed God that was thunder and lightning and storm-winds trapped up inside a human shape, the one with the stubborn hammer. The Hammer Man was helping the Puny God up with a hand on his elbow. The Hulk snarled. There was a sudden roaring from behind him, and he whirled to see the Iron Man swooping in through the window. “Hey there, Big Guy.” He greeted.

The Hulk growled at him, but not as aggressively as he could have. He liked the Iron Man. _He_ never flinched away from the Hulk, and he never pretended to be less than he was. He was light and power like a star going supernova, and he wore it right there in the center of his chest, telling the whole world just how dangerous he was. “Look.” The Iron Man went on, spreading his arms carelessly and striding forwards. “It’s okay if you want to smash for a bit. Smash away, Big Guy. We’re just here to make sure you don’t smash anything irreplaceable, okay?”

The Hulk snorted an acknowledgement, and rounded back on the Puny God and the Hammer Man. “Oh, joy.” The Puny God muttered, rolling his eyes. “This is what I get for trying to be _helpful_.” The Hulk wasn’t usually one for precision work, but this time, he was definitely going to smash the Puny God’s _face_. Behind him, the Iron Man laughed.

“Suck it up, sweetheart.”

After that, all the Hulk really remembered was a lot of fighting and smashing and the three infuriating humans – supposed _gods_ – darting around him, never staying still long enough for him to smash them properly. It was enraging, but eventually, his wrath began to wear out, and the Hulk began to tire. He aimed one last chunk of… something – maybe a table? – at the Puny God, who wasn’t the Puny God at all, just a distortion of light meant to trick and trap, and the jagged piece of wood sailed right through him. The Hulk was too damn tired to get annoyed about it, and he flopped down to sit amongst the ruins.

After a minute, as he began to feel woozy and sleepy, the Iron Man clanked over and flopped down onto the remains of a bed. “You almost done, Big Guy?” He asked, sounding breathless. Hulk grunted, and slumped, and resentfully made way for Banner. And Bruce groaned, feeling the ache in his whole body as muscles finished shifting and his skin settled back where it was supposed to be. “Hey there, Brucie.” Tony greeted, cheerfully irreverent as always. “Glad to have you back.”

Bruce closed his stinging eyes and slung an arm over them for good measure.

“Well! That was fun but, uh… let’s not tell Darcy about this, yeah?” Tony added, and this time his voice was clear of the metallic distortion of the faceplate, and there was an audible grimace in his tone. “She didn’t notice anything, right, J?”

“No, sir. Ma’am is still in her suite, and playing P!nk songs loud enough to drown out even the Hulk, sir.” JARVIS replied promptly.

“She needs better music.”

“Funny, sir. When I offered her a choice of your usual playlists, she said the same thing about you.”

Tony gave a theatrical gasp. “Heathen!”

Bruce laughed. It was better than crying.

* * *

Darcy followed Jane to London, and Bruce felt like he could breathe again. Tony clearly disapproved heartily, and sulked aggressively at Bruce for a couple of weeks. Bruce spent a lot of time talking with Pepper instead, who was blessedly non-judgemental. By the time winter rolled around, and Tony, Pepper, and Loki relocated to the West Coast, Bruce felt almost settled in the Tower. It became a lot less homey without Tony and Pepper around, but Bruce only vaguely entertained ideas of leaving. It was strangely isolated, even for being right in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world, and Bruce appreciated the peace and solitude.

He was looking forward to a peaceful Christmas, but what he got instead was three days of high anxiety. It started when he asked JARVIS to update the shopping list, and it took the AI an entire minute to respond. “Is everything alright, JARVIS?” Bruce asked, after he’d gotten a surprisingly absent confirmation from the AI.

There was another ominous pause. “Forgive me, Dr Banner. I’m afraid I’ve lost contact with Malibu, I’m a little distracted attempting to reinitialise.”

Bruce’s heartbeat picked up, and he breathed carefully. “Do you have any idea what happened?” He asked, the need to know too intense to be stopped by the knowledge that he probably shouldn’t distract JARVIS right now.

Instead of answering him in words, JARVIS merely turned on the TV in the next room. Bruce followed the sound, and watched the live news footage of three helicopters bombing the hell out of Tony’s Malibu house with horror. Something that looked like a piano took out one of the helicopters, and something that looked a hell of a lot like ice jammed the rotors of another, but the final one managed to collapse the majority of the house into the sea before anyone could take it down.

The helicopter turned away, and the footage cut to a solemn reporter whose calm yet serious facade was ruined by her wide, shocked eyes. “It appears Tony Stark’s home has been almost entirely destroyed by unknown parties, although given Mr Stark’s earlier statements, speculation is rife that those helicopters belonged to the Mandarin.”

They then played a clip wherein Tony baited a terrorist. At that point, Bruce decided to sit down so that he could bury his face in his hands more easily. When the reporter’s voice was replaced with a far more familiar one, Bruce looked up again. “I don’t know.” Pepper was saying. She looked frazzled and desperate, with dust smeared on her face but no injuries that Bruce could see. “I didn’t see any identifying marks on the helicopters, so they could have belonged to anyone.”

“Surely it’s obvious that the Mandarin is behind this.”

“That’s possible, yes.” Pepper confirmed, frustrated and distracted. She glanced over her shoulder at the front wall of the house, and the doors through which the ocean could be seen. “Even likely, but it’s not as though the Mandarin is the _only_ enemy Tony’s made.”

Bruce smiled grimly at that, but his dark humour died with the reporter’s next question. “And was Mr Stark still inside when the house collapsed?” Pepper gave the man a burning look, and the man recoiled. She opened her mouth, no doubt to verbally eviscerate him, when someone else yelled. Bruce didn’t catch what they said, but the camera swung around to see one of the helicopters setting down on the far side of the house, a good way along the cliff.

Pepper took a step towards it. “Miss Potts, are you sure that’s a good idea?” The reporter asked cautiously.

It did cause Pepper to pause, and indecision warred on her face for a moment. That moment was shattered when someone _screamed_. It was a scream of mixed agony and fury, high enough that Bruce suspected it was female. And then Pepper’s face drained entirely of colour, and something like devastation cracked through her expression. Without another word, she broke into a run, heading towards the source of the sound, but the helicopter blades were picking up speed again, and Bruce didn’t think she’d make it there in time to do anything but watch it fly away.

There were more reports, and glimpses of the police and the FBI and what Bruce suspected were a few SHIELD agents talking to Pepper, who was more often than not crying in the brief clips. Crying like her entire world had been torn in two. “Dr Banner.” JARVIS called, maybe five minutes after everything had gone down. Bruce looked up to indicate JARVIS had his attention. “I have contact with one of the Iron Man suits, and it appears Mr Stark is alive, if a little worse for wear.”

Tension bled out of him, and Bruce melted into the couch. “Thank god.”

“However, Miss Silvers appears to be missing.” JARVIS added grimly.

Bruce took a moment to process that. His initial reaction was one of vaguely sceptical amusement. Loki had survived meeting the Hulk, he didn’t think anything your average terrorist could throw at her would faze her. Then he caught another glimpse of Pepper, crying, and remembered that scream, and winced. He didn’t like Loki enough that he could say he would personally be upset if she got hurt, but thinking of what it would do to Pepper and Tony, who clearly loved her already, made him ache with empathy.

The next day, Pepper went missing, and Iron Man just missed saving the President himself from being kidnapped. The day after that, Bruce couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing another report about the missing President. He decided not to watch TV. Being chased across the world by the American government had pretty solidly destroyed any patriotism he might have harboured, and he hadn’t had very much to begin with. He was worried enough about Pepper and Tony that he just didn’t have the emotional energy to care about some jumped-up politician who had probably rigged the election.

Bruce was on his way to bed on Christmas Eve when JARVIS suggested he might like to turn on the TV. Warily, Bruce did so, and he watched the rather terrible night-time footage of Iron Man and War Machine – Bruce was of the opinion that not only was Iron Patriot a stupid name, but that the creator had naming rights, and Tony had called that suit War Machine – attempting to rescue the President from public execution, and fighting off hoards of soldiers who appeared to be able to set themselves on fire.

Then the entire ship – Oil rig? Dock? Something… – was coated in hoarfrost, and the main deck was several inches deep in ice. Bruce leaned forwards in an attempt to see a better image – the cameras were surprisingly static – and caught a few seconds where a blue-skinned woman in lacy black lingerie with a black plat down the middle of her back made a violent gesture and froze one of the glowing soldiers solid. She followed up with a roundhouse kick that shattered the block of ice and the person inside.

The video wasn’t very good, static and too far away for details, but the way that woman moved as she fought made the Hulk rumble in the back of Bruce’s head in a very familiar way. He’d had no idea Loki could turn blue. Then Tony fell out of the sky – again! Really, it was getting to be a bad habit of his – and Pepper came out of nowhere to kick the ass of the guy advancing on Tony.

Bruce didn’t get any sleep that night, and by midday the next day, the three of them were back in New York. Less than two hours later, Darcy arrived like a hurricane. In a strange turn, she completely ignored the fact that Bruce was in the room. All her attention was focused on Tony. She hugged him, tight, then whapped him upside the back of the head. “Ow!” Tony whined. “What did I do?”

Loki and Pepper both turned to stare at him incredulously. “Tony, you _baited a terrorist_.” Pepper informed him tightly.

“I was kind of expecting that, honestly. I mean, I would totally do that if some asshole bombed our new intern, and I don’t even know his _name_.” Darcy interjected. “No, I’m just mad that he didn’t _tell anyone_ about the great big heaping pile of PTSD he’s been carrying around.”

“I didn’t want to dump that on-”

“Stuff it, Dad. You’re not Bruce.”

Tony barked out a startled laugh, while Bruce coughed and tried to figure out how he was supposed to react to that. Or even _if_ he was supposed to react to that. “Ouch.” He murmured dryly.

“Wouldn’t sting if it wasn’t true, dude.” Darcy retorted, giving Tony another hug before flopping down onto the footstool in front of the armchair Tony had claimed. Pepper gave Bruce a gentle, worried look, but Loki – predictably – was smirking, and he picked up his drink in a blatantly fake attempt to hide said smirk with the mug.

With every appearance of casual disinterest, Darcy said “Oh, congrats on joining the Avengers, Loki.”

Bruce had never expected to see the otherwise supremely composed god do a spit-take, but there was a spray of tea across the table as Loki spluttered and coughed his way into an indignant, deeply offended “ _What_?!”

Bruce had to press his lips together very firmly to keep from laughing. That was one of the best things he’d seen in a good long while, and he glanced over at Darcy before he could remember why that was a bad idea. Darcy raised her eyebrows at him, supremely smug, almost challenging, and utterly beautiful. Bruce looked away quickly.

To his relief – and confusion – Darcy didn’t pay the moment any mind, and went back to her conversation with Loki like nothing had happened. “You are, like, _all_ over the internet. You and Pep, actually. Feminist sensation. I mean, there are some dudebros drooling over the fact you were both kicking ass in your underwear, but, like, there’s also been some great discourse on the whole reversal of gender roles and how Iron Man was totally the damsel in distress.”

“I kind of was, wasn’t I?” Tony interjected.

“Eh, kind of. Life really doesn’t fit very well into those sorts of stereotypes. I mean, you were the only one to not get kidnapped, but still, good on you for letting Pep and Lokes save themselves, you know? Which totally earned them, like, an _instant_ fan following. There’s even polls about what their superhero names should be and shit. I’m pretty sure Loki’s going to be called the Snow Queen, because of the Disney parallels, that movie is way too popular for that one not to take off, but it’s a bit of a toss up with Pep. I think Rescue was a pretty cute idea, and Lava Lady is way popular cause it sort of matches Loki’s epithet, and you two were one hell of a duo, but my vote is totally for Ignis.”

“Snappy. I like it.”

“Snappy _and_ sophisticated. It totally suits her, right?”

“Right.”

Loki interrupted their back-and-forth to demand Darcy show him these polls, and the conversation devolved into an in depth discussion on just how most superheroes had gotten their epithets. Most had come from the news, but with hard-copy newspapers dying out and everyone getting their news on social media, the public was getting a lot more say in what new epithets got used, if only through which hashtags trended on twitter.

When it got around to Darcy and Tony convincing Loki to make himself – or his blue female self, Bruce could barely keep up with his own alter-ego, Loki’s were starting to pile up way too high in his opinion – a twitter account, and Pepper started weighing in on the upsides of having a say in your own public image, Bruce decided it was time to leave them to it. This was nothing that concerned him, and he kept catching himself watching Darcy. She was utterly ignoring him, and while his rational mind was grateful for that, he was still watching her enthuse about social media, hands flying and eyes bright, with a deep sense of longing choking him. Better to put some distance between them, really.

He approached the elevators just as the doors slid open and none other than Director Nick Fury of SHIELD stepped out. He didn’t look at all fazed to see Bruce, but Bruce was pretty sure his own expression faltered. He just wasn’t sure he could handle Director Fury on top of Darcy Lewis all in one day. “Director.” He greeted carefully.

“Doctor.” Director Fury returned, one eyebrow twitching upwards for a moment before returning to neutral. Bruce wasn’t sure, but he thought that was maybe a very subtle indication of amusement. “How’s New York treating you?”

Small talk was _not_ what Bruce had been expecting, but, then, perhaps it wasn’t just small talk. He didn’t doubt that SHIELD was still keeping an eye on him, but he trusted enough in Tony’s skills and JARVIS’s diligence to assume they didn’t actually have eyes in the Tower. “Better than a lot of places.” He hedged. Director Fury nodded to show he understood, and Bruce suspected he actually might. He cleared his throat, and in an attempt at humour he already knew would fall flat before he even opened his mouth, asked “Does, uh, does Tony know you’re here?”

To his shock, Director Fury snorted, a vindictively amused little smirk playing about his lips. “Potts does. I expect she hasn’t warned the other two, however.” He stated. Bruce swallowed down his own laugh. “They’re all back in one piece?”

“Whole and making twitter accounts.” Bruce reported.

Director Fury’s humour was immediately replaced with exasperation. Bruce had never seen someone so clearly, visibly, utterly _done_ with a situation. It might have tugged at his sympathy a little, but he shoved the feeling down, because he’d already ruined enough just by _meeting_ his soulmates. “Whose bright idea was that? Stark’s?” Director Fury demanded in a growl.

Bruce’s lips twisted with the irony of _that_ question. “Junior, not senior.” He corrected. Director Fury’s one visible eye widened, and then jumped to the door to Tony’s penthouse. That one, momentary reaction was all Bruce needed to see to connect the dots. “You know who she is.” He stated, perhaps unnecessarily. But there was a touch of resentment, buried deep under all his other issues, that Fury couldn’t have _warned him_ before he set foot in this goddamned Tower.

Director Fury raised an eyebrow at him, slowly. “I’m the Director of a motherfucking _intelligence organisation_ , of course I know who she damn well is.” He retorted, and despite the harshness of his words, Bruce didn’t detect any actual anger underneath, and he was pretty good at picking out anger, even in other people. All he really saw in Nick’s eye was exhaustion, and not the sort that could be fixed with sleep.

It was a feeling he knew far too well. “What are you going to do?” Bruce asked, then wondered why he cared. It wasn’t as if _he_ had any place with either one of them. It shouldn’t matter to him what Nick- what _Director Fury_ was going to do, because he’d already decided to have nothing to do with either of them. Nothing Director Fury said could change his mind.

Director Fury didn’t answer him directly. Instead he lifted his gaze to the corner of the ceiling and addressed JARVIS. “JARVIS, Could you inform Potts, Stark and _Liesmith_ -” The distaste layered into that name without a single change in pitch or volume was, quite frankly, impressive. “-that I’ve arrived for my _private_ meeting with them?” He requested.

“Of course, Director,” came the prompt response.

A couple of minutes later, Darcy exited the penthouse. She cast Director Fury a sharply curious look, like she might stop to talk to him, but when the man ignored her with supreme indifference as he swept into the penthouse and firmly closed the door behind himself, she pulled a face, flapped a hand irritably at the doorway, and strode towards the elevators.

Once she was inside, she turned and leaned back against the handrail that circled the little cubicle. “For fuck’s sake, you don’t have to wait for another one, just get in here. It’s not like I have cooties or something.” She huffed at him.

Bruce swallowed. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” He murmured.

Darcy scoffed at him. “I’m not going to _taze_ you in the bloody lift.” She ordered impatiently. Then, to his utter bewilderment, she grinned. “Bloody lift.” She repeated delightedly. “I sound so _British_ , don’t I sound so British right now, J?”

“Eminently so, ma’am.”

Darcy narrowed her eyes at the ceiling. “Was that _sarcasm_ , J?” She demanded.

“Ma’am, I would _never_.” JARVIS assured her.

Darcy snorted her way into laughter. “Sure you wouldn’t. Okay. _Bruce_ , come on.” She instructed emphatically, and Bruce, against his better judgement, edged into the elevator. “Jane’s lab and wherever Bruce is going, please, J.” She instructed.

“My floor.” Bruce added.

“Of course, ma’am, Dr Banner.” JARVIS replied, and the elevator doors closed as it started to move.

Silence swelled to fill the small space, and Bruce closed his eyes and breathed from his diaphragm, in and out, longer on the exhale. “Look.” Darcy began, and Bruce flinched in surprise. He opened his eyes to find Darcy side-eyeing him dubiously. “Look.” She said again, more slowly. “I’m still pretty pissed at you, you know? But Jane and me are staying until after New Years, and I don’t want this weirdness or whatever issue you have to ruin the holiday, okay? So… I’m not gonna push, and you’re not gonna run away from me all the time, and we’ll all have a nice New Years, and then I’ll go back to being on the other side of the world, so you can stop flinching and shit.” She declared.

Bruce smiled, small and tight and sad. “Alright.” He agreed quietly.

Darcy’s expression crumpled, and she looked away from him sharply. She had to swallow before she could speak again. “Good. Glad we’re on the same page and all.” The elevator dinged and the doors opened on the floor holding Jane’s lab. “One day, I’m going to find our other soulmate, you know.” She informed him, and Bruce almost choked biting back a laugh. Darcy didn’t seem to notice. “And I’m going to introduce the two of you whether you like it or not.” She offered him a wry, heartbroken little smile. “Maybe they’ll be able to convince you to stop being such a stupid martyr, even if I can’t.”

“Maybe they won’t want to.” Bruce suggested tiredly. “Maybe they’ll understand why it’s a terrible idea.” Darcy scoffed at him, and finally left the elevator, flapping a hand at him in a pseudo-wave without once looking back. The doors closed, and Bruce allowed himself to sink down to sit on the floor.

He was right. Nick had kept Darcy at a distance for, well, probably years, the same as Bruce had. He couldn’t begin to guess at Nick’s motivations, not really, but he wondered if it might not be similar to Bruce’s own. Being the Director of SHIELD could hardly be that much safer – that much more conducive to healthy interpersonal relationships – than being the Hulk. It was all the confirmation Bruce needed that whatever doubts he might have, he was doing the right thing.

So why did he feel so miserable?


	3. Nick

Nick Fury spent the first eighteen years of his life with no soulmark. It wasn’t something he really worried about much, even while all the other kids got into epic dramas over theirs. He didn’t think about it, it was a non-issue, unless someone thrust the issue in his face, at which point he would generally roll his eyes at them until they stopped. Frankly, he thought everyone should be more worried about the threat of nuclear war and the oppression of minorities than they were about what words were written on their – or on other people’s – wrists.

It was barely two weeks after his seventeenth birthday that he joined the military. If asked why, he would have said he felt it was his duty to protect his country, and it wouldn’t have been a lie, but having two younger sibling that he felt responsible for – that deserved to be able to afford to go to college, if they wanted to – had equal sway on his decision, and… Well, if he was being honest with himself, which he tried to be, he did have a bit of a chip on his shoulder. There were too damn many people in the world who took one look at him and decided he’d never amount to anything. There was a not-so-tiny part of his soul that took every dismissive glance and derisive comment and responded with ‘fucking watch me’.

Kids in the military, it turned out, were just as obsessed with their soulmarks as kids at school, if _slightly_ less juvenile about it. The amount of gossip and rumour-mongering that got flung around was ridiculous, and Nick had even less time for it now than he had when he was at school. The only consideration he gave it was to feel a little sorry for the people who had a rank in their soulmark. It seemed to take all the credit and glory out of the achievement.

Nick had resigned himself to never having a soulmark by the time his eighteenth birthday was approaching. Most people he knew already had theirs, and while it wasn’t unheard of for people to get theirs later in life, it was rare enough that someone as disinterested in soulmarks as Nick Fury hadn’t encountered even a ‘friend-of-a-friend’ story about such a thing. It wasn’t as if he _disliked_ the notion of a soulmate, it had just never interested him. Fate and destiny were dangerous intellectual traps, in his opinion, and he wasn’t interested in laying all his hopes, or all the blame, in some mystical cosmic power when he could forge a good life for himself and his loved ones with his own two hands. If he fell in love, he fell in love, and no words on his wrist were going to make his mind up for him.

Three days before his eighteenth birthday, as if the universe had just been waiting for him to decide it was never going to happen before it proved him wrong, he woke up to find words scribbled across his wrist.

_Thanks for asking nicely._

Nick stared at the mark, not sure what to make of it. The handwriting was hasty, but not illegible, and the words were fairly innocuous. For all he knew, he might ask his soulmate if they could pass him a pen after they’d been having a bad day. They were also, he now knew, eighteen years – nearly to the day – younger than him. They wouldn’t be this age until he was _thirty-six_.

Covering the mark with the bracelet he’d always owned but never worn until that day, he decided he was going to carry on like the mark had never appeared. It wasn’t as though he could reasonably do anything to find his soulmate faster based on those words, and so there was no reason to waste precious thinking space on them. Even with that decision though, he still somehow – without ever meaning to, or even so much as looking at them again –managed to memorise the words on his wrist.

Life went on. Nick built himself an impressive career, made a handful of good friends, watched with satisfaction as his siblings blazed their own trails, and even got the chance to meet a legend or two. Howard Stark might be a genius and a patriot, but he was also a ruthless shark, and Nick hadn’t spent five minutes in the same room as the man before he decided he would never show the man his back. Director Peggy Carter was just as ruthless, steel all the way through, but she didn’t set off the same warning bells as Stark did.

Stark had a son, everyone in America knew about the boy genius Tony Stark, living up to his father’s legacy. Nick hadn’t even realised he was doing the maths until the thought crossed his mind that Tony was five months too young to be Nick’s soulmate. Then he berated himself for being ridiculous and tried not to think too hard about the fact that Stark’s son was only _nine years old_.

By the time he hit thirty, Nick was thoroughly fed up of the bullshit powerful men used as an excuse to send good, honest men to their deaths. He considered retiring, leaving the military and finding something else to do with his time, but he knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t made for a civilian life, and besides, he couldn’t abandon the men under his command. He took to working more and more in conjunction with SHIELD, because Carter, at least, seemed to understand the concept of stopping the fight _before it started_ , which he appreciated a great deal.

At thirty-five, Nick was picking up hints that he could be looking at yet another promotion. Making Colonel at that age was nothing to scoff at, something he could be proud of, but before it could happen, he got the shock of his life when he noticed something written on his right wrist.

_You know your goons still have my iPod, right?_

He’d been trying to read, and in the privacy of his own home, he hadn’t bothered with soulmark bracelets. He had no idea when it had appeared, how long it had been there without his noticing, but it couldn’t have been _too_ long. He showered regularly, after all. But it made no _sense_. It made so little sense that Nick was honestly a bit affronted.

Not only was it unheard of for anyone to have _two_ soulmarks – and Nick had to check that his first was still there, which it was – but the contents of this new mark was incomprehensible. Well, the ‘goons’ part he could understand; he was military, he had goons, but what the hell was an ‘iPod’? Of course, he presumed that it was probably some sort of future thing – he wondered if anyone at the turn of the century had been baffled by soulmarks referencing televisions – but he was too old to try to keep up with the exponentially increasing technology market.

And he was far, far too old for a new soulmark. Fucking hell, but he was going to be _fifty-three_ before his soulmate was even _legal_. He was more than old enough to be their _father_ , for crying out loud. Fate, god, the universe, whatever it was that put these marks on people’s wrists, Nick was now thoroughly convinced it had _no idea_ what it was doing.

He couldn’t help running his thumb over the new mark, though, considering the words and the bubbly – feminine – loops. His other soulmate – _other soulmate_ , fucking ridiculous – would be seventeen now, and hell, it was kind of lonely in his home these days. It might be nice to have someone to come home to, even if they were ridiculously young for him. Ridiculously young, because Nick had always been an old soul, even when he was a kid, and now that he was approaching forty, he was regularly accused of already acting like a grouchy old man. What seventeen year old would want a grouchy and disillusioned old military dog for a soulmate?

He snorted at himself, and shook the thoughts off. It wouldn’t help to dwell on it, it would happen when it happened, and if he was starting to think on that day – those _days_ , what the hell – with a sort of wistful hopefulness, that was just a sign he was going doddery at this grand old age of thirty-five.

At the grand old age of thirty-six, Nick was promoted to Colonel. He lasted three whole years before he gave in to Peggy Carter’s increasingly manipulative demands, and let himself be recruited into SHIELD. Director Carter groused a lot that he only had so many years of his prime left, and she could have used an agent like him five years ago. Nick refused to let that sort of thing stand, even if she was his boss now, and constantly reminded her that five years ago, he wouldn’t _be_ the agent he was now. Practice makes perfect, and experience breeds competence. Then she’d laugh, hand him a mission briefing, and they’d do the whole song and dance again next time.

Nick enjoyed it more than he thought he would. He’d thought that the world of espionage would grate, there was so much backstabbing that went on, and he liked to think of himself as an honourable man. But he had never – not once in his life – experienced anything quite so satisfying as putting the pieces together, finding the clues in so many disparate rumours and intelligence reports, and pulling the rug out from under some asshole who thought he could hurt the people under Nick’s protection.

And it turned out, he was _damned good at it_. He’d always been good at puzzles, with a memory like a steel trap, an excellent poker face, and a ruthless willingness to get his hands dirty to get the job done. Exactly no one was surprised when everyone from Carter to Pierce to the President himself agreed that Nick should be the next Director. He took the job – of course he did – and if he wondered what it might mean for his soulmates, that he was the Director of an international intelligence operation, not just in danger of being killed or worse, but with a job that _required_ utmost secrecy and discretion, well… he kept all of those musing very firmly to himself.

He hadn’t been Director a year before everything went to hell in a handbasket. The turn of the millennium seemed to have driven everyone _mad_ , as far as Nick could tell. Although when he complained as much to Peggy – as she insisted he call her now that she was no longer Director – she just laughed and gave him a look that suggested she thought it was cute that he still hoped it wouldn’t be like this all the time. Nick really, really hoped people didn’t _often_ manage to plant bombs in SHIELD headquarters without anyone stopping them before it blew. That was all the thinking he had time for, before the building came down on top of him, agony exploded through the left side of his face, and everything went black.

Waking up was a surprise. Nick had honestly thought he was done for, less than a year into being Director, which would have been embarrassing as hell, but at least he would have been too dead to care. Instead, he was alive, thanks to the many, many experiments SHIELD had done in an attempt to replicate Erskine’s Serum. It wasn’t perfect, and Nick would never see out of that eye again, but he wasn’t dead, and he was grateful for that.

It took him an entire year to clean up the attempted coup, because of course it was an inside job, how else had they gotten that bomb into SHIELD without anyone noticing? And then, a month after the anniversary of the destruction of SHIELD’s headquarters, Nick started experiencing severe pain in his left eye which _should_ have been mostly scar tissue by then. Because – of course – their ironically named Infinity Serum wouldn’t _actually_ last without periodic upkeep.

It was hardly a massive inconvenience, though, and Nick was a practical soul even before a lifetime of military service etched that truth deeper into his bones. So he accepted this new addition to his annual routine, and worked on. Being Director meant a lot less fieldwork and a lot more paperwork, so the majority of his time, Nick sat behind a desk and took reports on this disaster and that accident and another potential agent. Agents Hill and Coulson became invaluable as his right hand and his eyes on the ground, and he learned to trust their judgement _almost_ as much as he trusted his own.

If it weren’t for them, he would have been _swamped_ by the workload. Running an intelligence outfit required a lot more than even just knowing who his people were, where they were, and what they were doing. He had to keep up with global news. He had to keep up with the current politics of every country, even the ones as reclusive as Wakanda, as well as public opinion and general news. He had to keep up with new developments, new technology. He had to keep his thumb on the pulse of the entire goddamned world and keep his eyes open for _anything_ that might be an early warning sign.

For the most part, Fury preferred reading the reports on the new science and technology in the world, than slogging through the newest round of bullshit various politicians were spewing but sometimes even the steady, relentless progress of science threw him a curveball.

Apple Inc. was planning to release a portable music-playing device they were calling the _iPod_ some time before the end of the year.

Nick stared at the report, then at his right wrist. Slowly, he put the report down and, glad that he was alone in his office, pulled off his soulmark cuff to stare at the words etched across his skin. He was a spy, he knew enough about handwriting to know this soulmate – _this_ soulmate, that was still just as ridiculous as it had been when the mark had first appeared – was female and right-handed. She was also still a month away from turning _fourteen_.

Of course a young teenage girl would want an iPod. Nick was no Stark, to predict the future of technology precisely enough to get out fifty years in front of it, but even he knew that the iPod was going to become embedded in their culture, maybe not quite as prevalent as phones and computers, but music was a universal constant.

This wasn’t a surprise, he reminded himself. He’d known for fourteen years that some kind of device or object called an ‘iPod’ would be around by the time he met his second soulmate. He should just brush it off and move on, and he certainly shouldn’t abuse his position to indulge his personal curiosity. He shouldn’t.

He made a note for someone to keep him up to date on the development of iPods anyway, and studiously ignored Hill’s bewildered scepticism when she noticed. Politely, she didn’t press for elaboration on his simple explanation of ‘idle curiosity’, even though it clearly only left her with more questions. Instead, she handed him yet another stack of papers, and let him get on. No rest for the wicked.

The world spun on, continuing to teeter right on the edge of apocalyptic disaster in a way that would send any sane man running for the hills and preferably a nice sturdy bunker. As it was, Nick wasn’t sane, and he stayed right where he was, in the thick of it, and only really left his desk long enough to sleep every night. Even so, his evenings were universally spent in his office, dinner eaten at his desk while he worked. And sometimes, in the privacy of his own damned office, he’d allow himself to relax once the work day was over, and take his soulmark bracelets off just to let the skin of his wrists breathe for a few minutes.

Ever since his _second goddamned soulmark_ had shown up, Nick had made it a habit to glance over his soulmarks every morning and every evening. He wasn’t _expecting_ another change, but then, he hadn’t been _expecting_ a second soulmark to pop up, either, and that had happened. Better to be safe than sorry. It didn’t stop him being entirely shocked to see the distorted mess his first soulmark had become.

A little research told him there were several things that could affect a soulmark. The most commonly known one was, of course, death, but since his soulmark was still _there_ , he scrolled on. Some types of brain damage and some comas could cause a soulmark to fade or blur, but looking at the pictures of examples and comparing them to his own told Nick that that wasn’t the case here. This wasn’t just his soulmark fuzzing up; there was interference. There were some very interesting, very rare cases of soulmarks _changing_ , but Nick didn’t read too much about that because his soulmark wasn’t in a different language or saying something different, it was just plain distorted.

Which, it turned out, was one of the biggest pieces of proof the scientific community had for the existence of Multiple Personality Disorder. Not nearly as rare as soulmarks changing, it seemed that a person with more than one personality counted – in whatever way soulmarks worked – as distinct individuals who possessed the same soul, so their soulmate’s soulmark changed to reflect that. Nick’s soulmark wasn’t simply unreadable, it was two different greetings layered over each other.

Nick very carefully copied out his new soulmark in pencil, and then erased the parts he was sure was the old – the _first_ – persona. What he was left with was just barely legible, although the handwriting was _atrocious_. It was certainly intriguing, even if it did make Nick want to laugh mockingly.

_Why you not scared?_

It was going to be the way he entertained himself in his downtime for a long time to come, he could already tell, coming up with pithy responses to that dumbass question. It also said some very interesting things about his soulmate. After all, that combined with the original words and the fact that they even had Multiple Personality Disorder in the first place suggested that, perhaps, Nick’s soulmate wasn’t used to being treated well.

Nick had long since become inured to the awful realities of people, but somehow, that thought still managed to tug on his heartstrings, just enough to send a quiet ache through him. He liked to think he was decent to people until they proved they weren’t going to be decent right back, but he made a resolution, then, that he’d do his utmost to treat his soulmate with respect when he met them.

His work phone interrupted his thoughts, and he answered it while tossing the page he’d written his soulmark on into the incinerator. “Director Fury.” He greeted crisply as the note burned to ashes that were promptly dumped into the waste. He began efficiently lacing his soulmark bracelet back on.

“Sir, there’s a situation at Culver University.” Hill’s brisk, professional voice answered him.

“A situation?” Nick asked, rolling his eyes heavenward. There was _always_ some goddamned situation or other. He didn’t need the science-happy geeks at Culver _adding_ to his problems. Idly, he wondered what sort of lab accident they’d had this time, and how far-reaching the consequences would be. He made a bet with himself that it’d be their military projects – they were the ones that got pushed the hardest, after all, and so were most prone to cutting corners – and that it would be only a local disaster. Optimistic of him, but hey, he could afford to lose a bet against himself.

“Reports are… unclear, sir. There was an accident with their project on healing nanites, or at least, in those labs. There’s been massive destruction of that wing of the university, and witnesses claim to have seen a… giant green monster, sir.” Hill reported. She sounded deeply sceptical and dubious in the extreme, but even that wouldn’t stop her reporting all the facts, and Nick was grateful for it.

Military projects. What do you know. Nick couldn’t even gloat, because _giant green monster_ did indeed sound like something that belonged firmly in SHIELD’s wheelhouse, but what was the betting the military was going to do everything they could to keep everyone else out? “Get someone in there and find out what the hell is going on, Hill. _Discreetly_. And keep me updated.”

“Yes, sir.” Hill confirmed, and hung up.

The investigation revealed a military cover up of yet another experiment into recreating the super-soldier serum. But before they could roll out the welcome wagon for Dr Bruce Banner, he was taken into military custody, and Nick was stuck trying to hack his way through a jungle of red tape.

It wasn’t until a report from General Ross’s daughter, Dr Elizabeth Ross, crossed his desk that Nick began to suspect… well, what were the chances that it was only a coincidence that his soulmate had developed Multiple Personality Disorder on the very same day that Dr Bruce Banner’s repressed childhood trauma had a bad reaction to a little gamma radiation?

Nick got a call from General Ross himself with the news that Dr Banner was presumed dead after an _incident_ with the man’s father. Nick glanced down at his wrist, words hidden by the ever-present bracelet, but Nick knew he would feel it if his mark disappeared, if his soulmate had died. “Hundred bucks says he’s not.” Nick said into the phone. He might not be one hundred percent certain, but he was willing to trust his gut on this one.

“You’re on.” General Ross replied with forced joviality. Nick smirked, because if General Ross wasn’t damn certain the man was dead after dropping a missile on his head, then Nick’s chances of winning his bet were even higher than he first thought. He exchanged the required pleasantries with the General, before hanging up and looking over at Hill. “Find Banner.” Nick ordered her.

“Sir.” Hill said with a crisp nod.

“Keep me in the loop on this one.” He added. “Once you find him, do not approach. This has already been fucked up enough for one lifetime.”

* * *

The moment General Ross realised that SHIELD was searching for Dr Banner, he jumped in, threw his weight around, and demanded they cooperate on the project. Nick probably could have obfuscated and dodged, but he considered sharing most of his intel with Ross worth getting front row seats to _Ross’s_ investigation. SHIELD had more resources to dedicate to things like this, given it was their primary directive, but Ross was far more familiar with Dr Banner’s MO.

His gamble paid off, because it was General Ross that caught up to Dr Banner first, a full four years later. Nick was honestly impressed with Dr Banner’s resourcefulness in evading them so long. The downside to working with General Ross was that, of course, the man insisted on going charging in with a fully armed tactical squad, and there was only so much damage control Nick could do. “I want to observe.” He stated, startling the General. “Once we’re on site, give me half an hour to get into position before you move on the target.”

General Ross glowered at him. “If you spook him-” He began threateningly.

Nick gave him a look that, hardened General or not, shut him right up. “I’m not that sloppy.” He retorted levelly. “Half an hour.” He repeated.

“Half an hour.” Ross agreed reluctantly. “And not a second longer.”

The Chinese government was going to throw a complete fit if they found out the US army was here, and they were probably going to, because Dr Banner wasn’t avoiding the populated areas. No, he was right in the thick of of the over-crowded slums of every over-crowded city he came across. And unfortunately, Nick did stand out in among the crowd of Asians, being over six foot and black. Not to mention the fucking eyepatch. Still, he wasn’t the head of a spy organisation for nothing. A change of clothes, a change of posture, and everyone dismissed him as a slightly lost tourist and ignored him.

He slipped into the over-crowded bar Dr Banner appeared to be living above, lodging with the owners in exchange for menial labour around the place. And there he was, filling in a hole in the wall and trying not to take up too much space. Nick found himself a seat at the opposite end of the bar, tucked into the shadows and out of the way. Slouching there and nursing a drink, Nick was practically invisible. And he had a perfect line of sight along most of the bar, all the way down to where Dr Banner standing.

Nick took a moment to assess the situation, and tried not to grimace. Dr Banner was right next to the window, which meant that Ross’s men might have a clear line of sight, but it also gave him a much better chance of spotting them and bolting before they could even get close. Of course, Nick thought Ross was coming at this the wrong way anyway, but he did understand that a lot of military commanders didn’t always see the advantage of doing things _subtly_. That old adage about hammers and nails came to mind.

Nick wasn’t even surprised when everything went to shit.

Dr Banner clearly spotted _something_ , because he stiffened, and then moved away from the window with painfully feigned casualness. Over the comm. he was wearing, Nick could hear someone swearing, and Ross barking orders to “Move in, now! Don’t let him escape!”

Soldiers burst in, someone screamed, and Banner bolted. More soldiers appeared at the back door, and Banner skidded to a stop and ducked down behind the bar under a hail of tranq darts. From his seat, Nick could see the man; wild-eyed and pale, breathing too fast, looking desperately for some escape route. The proprietor was demanding to know what was going on in rapid-fire Mandarin, and the soldiers were ignoring her, hastily moving to surround that end of the bar. Most of the patrons scrambled to get out of the way, chairs clattered, the commander barked orders, and Nick could see the moment it all became too much for Dr Banner.

He flinched at a particularly loud bang as someone knocked over their chair, and green bled out over his skin. He hunched down smaller, covered his head with his hands like he was physically trying to hold it in. A huffed growl escaped him, and the soldiers edging closer to the bar faltered, and at that point, Dr Banner’s alter ego burst _through_ the bar, still expanding, to grab a soldier in each hand and toss them across the room with a roar.

Ducking down, Nick rolled his good eye skyward and set to helping the civilians evacuate before they got stepped on, or backhanded through a wall, or crushed by flying debris, which was just a few of the ways Nick saw soldiers get killed. Things began to get a little less chaotic as the place emptied of people, one way or another. A quick check of the room showed that the only civilians left were the proprietor and a couple of people ducked behind a fallen chunk of wall, too frightened to move. Keeping low, Nick went to grab them by their shoulders and shake them back to their senses. They whipped around, and Nick glared at them as he pointed them towards the door. Without any more delay, they scrambled for the exit.

The Hulk whirled towards them, teeth bared, a low growl rumbling away in his throat. Nick considered his options, evaluated the situation – remembered the words on his wrist – and straightened with a carefully constructed air of nonchalance. The Hulk turned to him, but Nick didn’t acknowledge it with so much as a glance. “Are you done?” He asked as he headed back to his seat and picked up his untouched drink. “Only, I'd like to finish my drink and I can't do that if you're smashing up the bar.”

The Hulk snorted a confused huff of breath at him, glaring. Nick finally met that gaze and raised his eyebrows over his first sip. “Why you not scared?” The Hulk demanded, sounding every inch a petulant child, if one could ignore the gravelly depth of the voice.

Nick smiled, both smug and having been proven right, and amused at that question. “I’ve seen scarier things than you.” He drawled, which was kind of a lie, and kind of… not. The Hulk was terrifying, sheer power and vitality, and if Nick was the sort of person to be intimidated by simple physical strength, the Hulk would definitely count as the scariest thing he’d ever seen. But he wasn’t. And so far, the Hulk was more rational than the majority of the politicians Nick had ever met. _That_ was scary.

The Hulk snarled, and put his fist through the remaining half of the bar. The soldier hiding behind it fumbled for his gun. “Hold your fire.” Nick barked, before the man could shoot and get himself killed. The soldier froze, well trained, but didn’t let go of the gun. The Hulk roared at the soldier, massive hands balled into fists. It wouldn’t be accurate to say Nick didn’t _think_ before stepping between them, but he certainly didn’t let a second of hesitation stall him.

He put himself very deliberately in front of the Hulk and turned to him with his best unimpressed expression, Dr Ross’s theory about the healing nanites reacting to childhood trauma like an injury in the fore of his mind. And like Nick had expected; when faced with an opponent that was neither aggressive nor frightened, the Hulk didn’t seem to know what to _do_. He faltered, staring at Nick in bewilderment, luminous gamma-green eyes assessing him with clear intelligence.

“I think there’s been enough pointless violence here for one day, don’t you think?” Nick asked the raging monster in front of him.

The Hulk snorted, derisive, mocking. “Not pointless for Hulk.” He growled through a grin that was more a threatening baring of teeth than any indication of happiness.

General Ross was a fucking _idiot_ , and Nick really wished he had the authority to give him the dressing-down this cock-up deserved. A mindless beast, was what he’d claimed Dr Banner turned into. And yet, here Nick was, having a conversation that was bordering on the philosophical with said mindless beast. Nick sighed and tipped his head in reluctant acknowledgement. “You slipped into pointless about five minutes ago, though. Do you really think you can take on the entire US military? Because if you think General Ross’s answer to this isn’t going to be to call in the cavalry, you’re as stupid as he claims you are.” Which was as close as Nick could get to telling the Hulk to get while the going was good with a comm in his ear and the handful of living soldiers still listening in.

A low growl rumbled up through the Hulk at the mention of General Ross. Nick could empathise. The Hulk didn’t move for several long seconds, breathing hard and glowering, but then he turned with a louder snarl, and bounded away over the remains of the wall.

Nick let out a slow breath to help release some of the tension knotting up every last one of his muscles, and then turned to the soldier behind him. “You hurt, soldier?” He asked, dropping down to kneel beside the man and check him over while the reinforcements spilled into the wrecked building.

“Cracked ribs, maybe, sir.” He replied, followed up by a hushed, heartfelt little “Thank you.”

Nick clapped him on the shoulder, taking care not to jostle him to much. “You did well, kept your head.” He countered, and then the man was being taken away for medical attention, and Nick left the men to the clean up.

Of course General Ross tried to pin the snafu on him, tried to claim it was Nick who alerted the target, not his men, and Nick did his best to keep his cool. The only reason the consequences _didn’t_ come down on Nick’s head was because Pierce backed him up, vouched for his judgement. Nick was grateful, even if it _galled_ him that he needed the support. Did the President and his people think he got his job for his _looks_ or something?

It wasn’t until days later that Nick had the time and space to wonder what it meant that Dr Bruce Banner, that the _Hulk_ , was his soulmate. One of his soulmates. It fitted, he thought. Dr Bruce Banner would fit in Nick’s life. Being the Hulk made him uniquely suited to being in the dangerous position of Soulmate to the Director of SHIELD, and by all accounts, the man was highly intelligent and shrewd.

On the other hand, the Hulk hadn’t recognised Nick for what he was. Probably hadn’t taken the time to read the words on his wrists in between evading the military and smashing up dens of iniquity across the globe. Could Nick really justify dragging the man into the shitshow that was international politics when mostly it seemed he just wanted to be left alone? He couldn’t miss what he didn’t know he had, after all, and as much as a wistful little corner of Nick’s heart wanted… something, he was practical enough not to bend to the whims of sentimentality.

“Keep an eye on Dr Banner.” He instructed Agent Coulson. “And on General Ross. Try not to let them run into each other again.”

“Sir?” Agent Coulson questioned, startled.

Nick gave him a cool, if tired, look. “I think we’ve lost enough good soldiers to Ross’s crusade, Agent. If we’re ever going to bring Dr Banner in, it won’t be by force of arms.”

“Of course, sir.” Agent Coulson agreed, grimacing faintly. “Are you planning to honeypot him? Romanoff-”

“I’m not quite ready to trust her with a deep cover mission, Coulson.” Nick interrupted. “Didn’t she try to kill Agent Barton again just last month?”

Coulson’s lips twitched towards a smile, which was _not the appropriate reaction_ , damn it. Not that Nick didn’t trust Coulson’s judgement when he backed up Barton’s claims that Romanoff could be swayed, and so far, that level of violence _had_ been confined to her soulmate alone and not any of Nick’s other people, but… That really didn’t say good things about her head-space. “At this point, sir, I think he’s starting to take it as a sign of affection.”

Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. “Not. Helping.” He accused.

Coulson cleared his throat. “She’s working with the psych department to break the conditioning, sir. She _wants_ to be here, and she _doesn’t_ want to kill Barton, as evidenced by the fact that despite everything she was taught, he’s still alive.”

Which was a damn good point. “I’m still not sending her out on deep-cover missions while she’s regularly attempting to kill one of my agents.” He repeated, and Coulson nodded, accepting that and letting the matter of Dr Banner drop completely. Good man.

Agent Romanoff did improve. Nick was honestly impressed. It seemed he’d been right to trust Coulson’s judgement, and Barton’s, because not only was Romanoff very good at what she did, but she managed to convince him that she was sincere. He tested her, of course, and she had to know he was testing her, that he was stringing her along even when he was almost sure she truly had changed sides, but he didn’t see any impatience in her. Tiredness, weariness, and no small helping of pain and self-doubt, but no expectation of more.

There was always a chance she was playing them all, but that was a chance Nick was willing to take. People with good judgement and a stubborn streak of humanity left in them were rare as diamonds in a pigsty, and Nick collected them as often as he could. Coulson was one of them, and he’d found Barton, who was another. And Barton had found Romanoff, and it looked like maybe she might fall into that category, too.

So, of course, he gave her Stark at his most obnoxious and self-destructive, just to see how well she’d do. He was glad he had, in the end, because it turned out the man was _dying_. Despite Nick’s ambivalent feelings towards the entire Stark family, he could admit the world would be a poorer place without Tony Stark in it. That, and Peggy would be devastated, and Peggy was a friend.

Stark was dying, and Nick didn’t have the goddamned time to give that problem the attention it deserved. He had to delegate to Romanoff and Coulson, because not only was something going on in New Mexico, but it seemed Dr Banner had decided that Ross’s latest ambush was one too many. What he was hoping to _do_ here in the USA, Nick had no idea, but he knew he needed to keep an eye on that, in case he got in too far over his head.

New Mexico first, though, and it quickly became apparent that this was bigger even than Stark, so he reassigned Coulson and hoped that Peggy was right and that Stark wasn’t actually as self-destructive as he pretended to be. He had another too brilliant scientist to worry about.

“We confiscated everything electronic.” Coulson told him as they looked over the cart-loads of gadgets that had been pulled from Dr Jane Foster’s haphazard lab, organised across tables and floor space by busy SHIELD scientists. “Honestly, sir, even some of our best are a bit lost as to some of these, and there’s so much duct tape going on that I could barely recognise the rest.”

Nick wandered between the tables, eyeing everything. He was no scientist himself, but he tried to keep up-to-date with, well, with just about everything, at least peripherally. So he looked, and tried to get a sense of whether Dr Jane Foster was the crackpot she looked like, or genuinely on to something earth-shattering. He was pretty sure it was the latter, because that was just how his life went, at this point.

Something incongruous caught his eye, and he paused. Backtracked. Wordlessly, he picked up the slightly battered iPod sitting in a bucket of other small and easily identifiable gadgets, and looked up to raise an eyebrow at Coulson. The man had the grace to look faintly chagrined. “We thought it best to take everything, sir, just in case.” He explained. “Besides, it _has_ been modified.”

It had, which iPods were very much not designed for. Nick studied it for a long moment, feeling… something. Anticipatory. Curious. He turned the thing on before his better sense could tell him to just put the damned thing down, and scrolled through the fairly ordinary collection of music. Pop and indie featured prominently, as well as movie soundtracks. “Dr Foster’s?” Nick asked.

“Her assistant’s.” Coulson corrected, sounding just a little bit confused. He still answered the question, though, which was why he was Nick’s favourite. “Miss Darcy Lewis. She seems perfectly ordinary, if a little out of place in Dr Foster’s lab. She has a Bachelors in Political Science, and is currently working on her Masters at Culver University.”

Because _of course_ it was god damned motherfucking _Culver_. Nick stared at the iPod in his hand and wondered if he was being ridiculous. A Bachelors suggested she was in her early twenties, maybe mid twenties, depending on how far into her Masters she was, and SHIELD had confiscated her iPod. “Do you have a file on her?” Nick asked, because there was one more thing he wanted to know before he decided whether he was seriously going to go down this road or not.

Coulson was obviously very confused by now, but he dug up and handed over a basic file on Miss Lewis. Nick skipped straight to the date of birth. April 13th  1987\. His right wrist itched. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to just walk away from this now. Fucking hell, but he was a complete fool. He turned the iPod off, dropped it into his pocket, and tucked the file under his arm for later perusal.

“Sir?” Coulson questioned, unable to hold his tongue any longer.

Nick just gave him a look. “What else do we know about what Dr Foster knows?” He asked, and it took Coulson a moment too long to answer, as he struggled to contain himself and his curiosity. But contain it he did, and Nick ignored the file until he was back on a SHIELD jet on his way back across the country to visit Culver University.

Once he had that relative privacy, Nick read the file in detail, and then did a little digging of his own. Coulson had only put together a preliminary file on her, so there were a lot of gaps to fill in. The details of her education, a few instances of travel, a basic background of her closer friends, a more detailed report on her step-father and half-brother. And, of course, a proper investigation into the blank space on her birth certificate where her father’s name should have been.

He tracked Moira Lewis’s history to MIT, no notable boyfriend at the time, and far too many possibilities for Nick to narrow down a list of potential fathers, except… Except a little digging, and calling in a favour that Nick probably shouldn’t have wasted on this, showed up a _fascinating_ piece of documentation some seven months before one Darcy Lewis had been born. Voluntary Termination of Parental Rights, signed by _Anthony Edward Stark_.

“Of fucking course.” Nick muttered to himself, staring in disbelief at the digital scan he’d been emailed. He looked down at his wrist, covered as always by his soulmark bracelet, but he didn’t need to be able to see it to picture it clearly. Well, Tony Stark’s god damned _daughter_ fit a lot better with the Director of SHIELD and the god damned Hulk than some random poli-sci major. “Motherfucker.” He sighed on an incredulous laugh, and then packed it all away in order to deal with General fucking Ross and his incompetent war-mongering bullshit.

* * *

The iPod burned a hole in his fucking pocket. He knew, of course, that one day he would give it back to her, in person, because the evidence was written across his wrist. He tried not to think about the reality of it too hard, because if he spent too long dwelling on the fact that if his soulmark hadn’t mentioned iPods, he never would have noted Miss Lewis’s, which meant he never would have had that connection, which meant he never would have looked into her, and she would have sailed right on past him without him ever realising how significant she was.

But he couldn’t bring himself to actually face her. He wasn’t used to feeling so conflicted, so _hesitant_ about something, but it was too easy to falter in the face of this. Even putting aside the very real fact that Nick was old enough to have been a contemporary of her _grandfather_ , he was reluctant to drag her into the world of espionage. If she was anything like her father then she would chafe under the weight of the secrets Nick had to keep, and even though he couldn’t deny that she was already in some danger just associating with Dr Foster and, through her, Thor, the idea of her being anywhere near SHIELD and their enemies scared him. And scared people didn’t make the best leaders, which he needed to be, in order to keep the whole damn world from falling apart.

The incident at the NASA lab with a Norse God stealing the Tesseract only reinforced that. He had Coulson get Dr Foster – and her assistant, of course – as far out of range as they could manage, and it still wasn’t quite enough to quell the tight grip on his heart.

And then there was Dr Banner. Nick couldn’t do anything but offer his hand and his sincere thanks, and it hurt, a little, in an indefinable way, to know what was coming next. “Thanks for asking nicely.” Dr Banner said, because it had been so many years since anyone had looked at him and seen more than a weapon, more than a monster to be caged. His eyes did have flecks of neon green amongst the brown as they shook hands, but Nick paid more heed to the way his hand trembled faintly in Nick’s grip.

It was probably a little ridiculous to feel so fiercely protective of someone who could tear a tank in two with their bare hands, but Nick figured he was allowed a little ridiculousness when it came to his soulmates.

The Avengers won the day, of course. It cost too much, but not nearly as much as it could have, and Nick would take it. He started the clean up, sending out team after team into Manhattan to clean up the battlefield and keep alien tech out of amateur hands. He took the reports from Romanoff and Barton personally. They should have been reporting to Coulson, but Coulson was currently the subject of Project Tahiti, so Nick had to pick up the slack.

And then there was Stark. Stark and his god damned soulmates making Nick’s life infinitely harder than it had to be. There was something intensely galling about opening up a video conference and seeing the three of them cuddled up together, with Miss Potts – of whom Coulson always spoke so highly – braiding an intergalactic criminal’s hair while said intergalactic criminal _fondled Stark’s arc reactor_ like they fucking owned it. Coulson and Romanoff both had reported to him just how twitchy the man got if someone even got close to touching the thing that kept him alive. Understandably. It spoke volumes that only a couple of days after being thrown off the top of a skyscraper by the god, Stark was willing to let Loki touch it as they pleased.

But Nick was a goddamned fucking sap. He looked at the three of them, so close and happy despite the disasters of the last few days and the rest of the shitshow yet to come, and wondered if there might, possibly, come a day sometime in the future where he, Darcy, and Bruce could share a moment like that. It tugged at his heart, a quiet sort of longing, but he didn’t dwell on it, because the world came first. The world always had to come first.

Not that Stark seemed to grasp that concept, but Nick was distracted by a moment of sheer existential absurdity when the man called him ‘Nicky’ - obviously only in mockery, but it was still the first time Nick had heard anyone use his first name in a _long_ damn time – and he realised that _this_ little brat was – _potentially_ – his future father-in-law. The universe was obviously having a good fucking laugh at his expense right now.

Miss Potts, at least, was as sensible as advertised, and agreed to step up to bat against the press, so that was one small load off Nick’s mind. Of course, then she turned right around and started stirring shit up about Coulson, which was aggravating. After weighing the pros and cons, Nick allowed her and Loki to take Coulson back to Stark Tower. It wasn’t worth the fight, and given that Loki appeared to know more about the side-effects of revivification than any of Nick’s people, it might even be useful, as long as it didn’t turn into a disaster.

Nick rather hoped – behind all his cynical calculations – that as long as nothing happened to Stark or Potts, Loki might even turn out to be an asset. Potts was clearly fond of Coulson, and Stark could be relied upon to aid SHIELD as long as the right buttons were pressed, and it seemed that, through them, Loki would be more friend than foe. Of course, since they seemed to be their only tethers, all someone needed to do was hurt Potts or Stark, and then, well, Loki had come damned close to fucking Earth over once already. Nick really, really didn’t want to see them try it again, properly motivated this time.

Things settled, as much as they ever did, for a little while. Then Stark decided to bait a fucking terrorist for Christmas, and Nick cursed the universe for saddling him with two generations of lunatic Starks. He wondered, with a sort of resigned despair, what Darcy might do if provoked. So far, she’d been impressively sane for a Stark, but Nick knew his luck, and he didn’t quite trust that to last.

Running into her and Dr Banner in Stark Tower was like a one-two gut-punch of longing and possibility. For a second, Nick considered letting that be the moment, letting Miss Lewis realise what he and Dr Banner already knew. But he knew now was not the moment. Not when he had a debriefing to see to, and apparently a public relations drama to curb, and _then_ a recently kidnapped president to reassure, and an entire conspiracy to dismantle and clean up. The world came first.

And perhaps a little of it was hesitation. It was unbecoming of the Director of SHIELD, but he felt that in this, at least, he should be allowed a moment or two of internal conflict. He knew, of course, that it would have to happen eventually. Fate would no doubt push them together in the end, but Nick felt _very_ cold at the thought of Miss Lewis being used against him the way Potts and Loki had been used against Stark just yesterday. Unlike Stark, he couldn’t afford to throw everything into a reckless rescue, and the thought of having to weigh Miss Lewis’s – or Dr Banner’s – _life_ against against his responsibility to the world, rather than just their happiness, was enough to make him feel sick to stomach.

 _Not now, not yet,_ he thought with a touch of desperation as he walked right past his soulmate without so much as looking at her. This way he could at least _pretend_ he wasn’t compromised for a little while longer.

A little while turned into weeks, into months, and Nick was kept busy enough that he let the excuses stand. Then aliens fell out of the sky – again – right on top of Miss Lewis – _again_ – and it forced Nick to confront the fact that he was being chicken-shit. He wasn’t protecting her from anything. Clearly those Stark genes were going to land her in the middle of trouble no matter what he did, and she was evidently capable of protecting herself if the footage of her knocking aliens over like bowling pins in her Iron Man – Iron Maiden, the press was calling her – armour. And he wasn’t protecting himself, either. He was already emotionally invested, already compromised, and keeping his distance wasn’t going to stop him from caring.

So he had Barton fly him out to London to ‘oversee the clean-up’. Barton clearly didn’t buy that excuse for a second, and kept giving Nick befuddled looks the whole way there. Nick ignored them. He ignored a lot of the looks he was getting as he walked into the Old Royal Naval College, discussing the details of the clean up with the Agents in charge and keeping any eye out for a certain astrophysicist’s assistant.

He found her sooner than he’d expected to, having a loud debate with Coulson over – he figured out after a few minutes of eavesdropping – who technically had the right to collect the scattered remains of the dark elves’ technology. “Excuse me.” He said, in a perfectly unimpressed, long-suffering tone, nodding towards the argument to indicate his intention to intervene. The agent who’d been showing him around gave him a ‘better you than me, sir’ look, and scarpered before she could get dragged in.

Coulson spotted him first, and looked distinctly relieved, which meant that Darcy’s eyes were narrowed suspiciously behind her glasses when she turned towards him, only to widen when she realised who he was. Then her chin kicked up with stubborn, defiant pride, and it took all of Nick’s considerable willpower to keep a grin off his face.

“Director Fury, sir.” Coulson greeted.

Nick nodded to him. “Agent Coulson. Having trouble?” He asked dryly.

“Ah, no, not as such.” Coulson cleared his throat, even though his eyes were bright with humour underneath his awkwardness. “Miss Lewis here was just attempting to negotiate the release of alien technology to a civilian.” He explained in a tone of bland disapproval.

“Excuse _you_ , I am _owed_!” Darcy announced archly. Then she rounded on Nick with a stubborn pout on her lips, and; “You know your goons still have my iPod, right?” She demanded, all righteously outraged and demandingly indignant. Out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw Coulson’s expression go slack with bewilderment, and then, dawning realisation.

“No,” Nick informed Darcy blandly, “they don’t.”

Darcy drew a breath, intending to argue, and then just froze, mouth half open and finger raised for emphasis she didn’t need anymore. Into her wordless, stunned silence, Nick drew her long-missed iPod out of his pocket, and presented it to her. Darcy’s eyes flickered down to it, and then back up to his face, and he could see her putting the pieces together even faster than he’d expected. “Oh.” She said, strangely quiet and diminished.

Nick had half a second to feel concerned, and then she slapped him in the face.

“ _Two and a half years?!_ ” Darcy yelled, hand balling into a fist like she was debating whether a slap was quite violent enough to express herself adequately, or perhaps like she was just trying to resist the urge to slap him again.

After a moment of eyeing that hand warily, Nick decided she deserved an answer. He looked her dead in the eye, and refused to let himself lie. “I was scared.” He admitted, and at least it took most of the wind out of Darcy’s sails. She deflated, the frustration and confusion draining out of her to leave only a tired sort of hurt behind. Nick figured a little more honesty could start to fix that, too, so he added; “I’m sorry.” Darcy blinked. Nick dared to smile faintly. “I’ll do my best not to let it cloud my judgement again.”

There was a moment, then, where Darcy was visibly weighing his apology, and Nick waited with all the patience he’d learned over his long career. He suspected he would be forgiven, but he hadn’t at all expected to be yanked down into kiss right off the fucking bat. Not that he was complaining. Quite the opposite, really, as he let his hands settle comfortably on her waist to tug her in a little bit closer so that he didn’t have to bend his neck at quite such an awkward angle.

It wasn’t a shy kiss, either, or especially chaste. Nick didn’t much care – he’d like to see anyone tell the Director of SHIELD what he could or couldn’t do – but when Coulson pointedly cleared his throat, Darcy startled like she’d forgotten they were in public, and drew back. There was a hint of a blush on her cheeks, but it was eclipsed by the smug, daring grin spreading across her face.

“My dad is going to flip his shit.” She announced with wicked cheer.

“Serves him right.” Nick concurred dryly.

It made Darcy laugh. “True.” She agreed, nodding, and then she sobered a little, a touch of a frown marring her amusement. “I figure Bruce already knows, huh?” She asked.

Nick nodded once.

Darcy’s smile turned bitter and pained. “Did he run away from you, too?”

Nick turned that over for a moment, considering. “He certainly didn’t come looking for me after we saved the world.” He acknowledged, and then shrugged one shoulder. “But then, neither did I.”

“Because you were scared?” Darcy challenged.

Nick raised an eyebrow at her, but she didn’t back down an inch, just raised her eyebrows right back. It made him smile, even if the topic of conversation turned it wry and, yes, maybe a little pained. “No, because I promised him he would be free of SHIELD after we found the Tesseract. And I think he’s been betrayed enough in his life.”

At that, Darcy did back down, dropping his gaze to stare contemplatively at her hands resting splayed across his chest. “But _you_ aren’t SHIELD.” She countered, looking up at him again and tugging a little on the lapels of his coat to emphasise her point. “ _This_ doesn’t have anything to do with _SHIELD_.”

“My job is a twenty-four-seven commitment, Darcy. SHIELD casts a shadow over _every_ part of my life, even this.” Nick told her, solemn in the face of it. He would never, ever regret giving so much of himself up for the safety of the world, but it would hurt a _lot_ if it caused one – or _both_ – of his soulmates to baulk at the thought of being with him.

“Yeah, but there’s still a difference between Director Fury and _Nick_.” Darcy countered. “And maybe a visit from the Director of SHIELD would have been breaking your promise, but a visit from _Nick_ might be what he needs to realise that he’s not just some giant ball of rage and destruction.” Then she seemed to falter, and she dropped his gaze again. “I don’t know, maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I-” She sighed in frustration, and one of her hands left his chest to card back through her hair. It was a very _Stark_ gesture, Nick noted with amusement. He’d seen three generations of Starks do that exact thing when wrestling with concepts they were struggling to articulate.

At least Darcy was the only Stark he’d ever felt the impulse to soothe via touch; he wanted to run his hand up and down her back in gentle encouragement, so he did. Darcy blew out a heavier sigh, and shook her head. “I tried to convince him, you know. To- to take a chance on us, but… he wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t even consider it. And I figured… I figured maybe it had to be _all three of us_ , that maybe, alone, I just wasn’t… _enough_. Maybe _you_ could convince him where I couldn’t.” Darcy huffed a faintly self-recriminating laugh.

“I won’t push him into something he’s not comfortable with.” Nick told her, and Darcy nodded her agreement without looking up. He could tell she wasn’t happy to hear it, even if she did agree, so he was glad that he could offer her at least a sliver of hope. “But I do think the three of us are over-due for a chat.” He added.

“Yeah?” Darcy prompted, looking up with a hopeful smile beginning to unfurl across her face.

Nick nodded. Darcy kissed him again.


	4. Epilogue

The throne-room of Asgard was silent in the wake of Thor’s departure. Loki stood, unmoving, at the foot of the throne, wondering why it was that even when he was trying to do something ‘right’, Thor _still_ managed to derail his plots at the most crucial of moments. The dark elves were defeated, as planned. Midgard was saved, as planned. The Aether was sealed away, as planned. Loki even managed to trick Odin into a healing stasis, as planned.

And then, of course, Thor refused to take the throne, which was _not_ what Loki had planned. “I have spent too long already away from Jane.” He had explained, and then he’d clapped Loki on the shoulder. “I leave Asgard in your capable hands, brother.”

Loki had been rendered speechless in a combination of shock and outrage. How _dare he_ say that _now_ , when Loki no longer felt the need to try and prove himself a capable ruler? How could he say that and mean it, after how terribly Loki had fucked up? He’d left, chortling, before Loki could find his tongue.

Now, Loki turned to look up at the throne. His, now, at least until Mother recovered. It felt like a nightmare. The memory of the last time he sat that throne threatened to overwhelm him; such similar circumstances, yet distorted into something alien. It wasn’t Odin’s recovery he was waiting on, but Frigga’s. Thor was off to Midgard of his own free will, not banished there as punishment. And there was so much to do in the wake of an assault on Asgard’s defences, but this time it was Dark Elves, not a ploy of Loki’s own devising.

The door to the throne room opened, and Loki looked behind him to see Heimdall striding into the hall. A frown reflexively formed on Loki’s brow. His dealings with Heimdall had always been contentious. Heimdall could see nearly everything, and Loki had never liked being spied upon. Loki was one of the few people in the Nine Realms capable of evading Heimdall’s sight, and _he’d_ never much liked not knowing what was going on. They were rather destined to get on each other’s nerves.

“Thor informed me of his decision to leave the regency to you.” Heimdall stated when he came to a halt several paces away from bottom of the stairs leading up to the throne’s dais. “Asgard, it seems, is your responsibility once again.”

Loki gritted his teeth at the barb buried under that mild statement. He couldn’t even tell if it was _meant_ to sound that way, or if it was his own insecurity latching on to Heimdall’s words. And would he even have known there was a difference, before? Before Tony and Pepper had spent the last year and a half helping heal old wounds. Before he’d seen Tony’s insecurities so clearly and known it was only because they mirrored his own uncomfortably closely. Before Pepper had taught him to see himself the way she saw him; with compassion, and yet uncompromising.

It was Pepper’s smile he pulled onto his face then, polite and easy and as close to honest as a mask could be, in the face of Heimdall’s words. As if they were only exactly what they sounded like, and nothing more. “Yes, it seems so.” He agreed blandly. “So tell me, how does the rebuilding go? And the wounded? Have we enough healers?”

It took Heimdall a moment to answer, and Loki dared to hope he’d startled him. As Heimdall answered, and they began to discuss the tedious minutia of statecraft, Loki sat upon the throne. It took him a moment to realise what he’d done, with all his attention on the discussion, he’d only thought to make himself more comfortable for what was clearly going to be an impromptu meeting. But then he felt the subtle magics woven into the throne wrap around him, bending to accommodate him, and they caught his attention.

Heimdall’s gift of sight was natural, but Odin, of course, had been unwilling to allow another in Asgard to have such an advantage over him. He had enchanted his seat of power so that he who sat the throne could see all that falls under Asgard’s domain, should he will it. On impulse, Loki allowed the magic to show him the Royal Healer’s Wing, where Frigga was recuperating, and then Thor, returned to earth and reunited with Jane, and then Darcy, who was-

Loki sat back, eyebrows raised despite himself. “What have you seen?” Heimdall asked, amused, and not at all put out that Loki had gotten distracted in the middle of their discussion.

For a moment, Loki considered what to tell him, considered _how_ to tell him, and wondered if he _dared_ voice the words that _wanted_ to spill out of his mouth. Then he decided that it would be a dark day indeed the day Loki Friggason did not dare. “I believe my daughter has just found her second soulmate.” He announced, letting pride seep into his voice.

“Which daughter?” Heimdall challenged.

“Darcy.” Loki replied.

Heimdall frowned at that. “You would claim her as such?”

“She is my soulmates daughter.” Loki replied, voice going hard. “And as long as neither my soulmate nor Darcy herself argues against the claim, that makes her mine.” Slowly, Heimdall bowed his head in acknowledgement, and his eyes gleamed with inner light as he turned his own sight to the scene Loki was watching.

“Ah, the head of SHIELD. They are well matched, I think.” Heimdall mused.

“He is known to you?” Loki questioned, intrigued.

Heimdall nodded. “He was present for a while during Thor’s exile, but he came to my attention before that. On a planet such as Midgard, it pays to keep an eye on those who are no longer bound to a human lifespan.”

Loki raised his eyebrows. “Do you know how he came by such a gift?”

Heimdall shrugged. “Some human concoction. Based upon Steven Rogers’ transformation, I believe. It requires periodic re-consumption in order to maintain, much as our golden apples.”

“I see.” Loki murmured, disconcerted. Bruce Banner was functionally immortal, as far as Loki could tell, and now he’d been told that Nick Fury, too, had some manner of reversing or slowing time’s effect upon himself. For now it would only be a benefit, while Darcy was still young and her soulmates were already on one side or the other of middle-age, but…

Something to think on, Loki decided, and then turned his gaze, briefly, over his soulmates, and the rest of his mortal children. They were well enough, so he forced himself to pay attention to Asgard and her needs, as was his duty now. Days rolled by, and Loki disliked being so far from his soulmates for so long. Not that he hadn’t wandered for longer – sitting still simply wasn’t in his nature – and further from them in the last year, but this had not been his choice, and even though he had spent longer still in Asgard before, the knowledge that he was now chained to her for as long as Frigga was recovering itched under his skin and provoked his resentment.

It would be weeks before Frigga was healed and whole, weeks that Loki would have to spend here, guiding the placid-minded fools of Asgard and mediating their petty disputes. He took his solace where he could, dream-walking into Tony and Pepper’s dreams as often as he could, and watching over their children from the throne.

Peter and Lydia, of course, had their Jotun heritage to keep them safe, from radioactive spiders and lycanthropes alike, but Darcy was not so fortunate, and it did seem to be something of an issue. Or at least, her soulmate believed it was. That was a conversation that Loki was not sorry to have eavesdropped on, even though he was sure it was meant to be private.

Just a few days after their meeting in London, Darcy and Fury had returned to New York and sought out their other soulmate. Of course, given that Dr Banner was currently staying at Stark Tower, they couldn’t get to him without going through Tony first. The look on Tony’s face when Darcy had called Fury ‘your son-in-law’ was _priceless_ , and Loki was very glad no one else was in the throne room to see their Regent sitting slumped on the throne cackling like a lunatic.

And Darcy had used Tony’s preoccupation with his own horror to sweep past him and off to Dr Banner’s apartment, Fury on her heels.

Dr Banner was, Loki had to admit, a clever man, because he only needed one look at the two standing on his doorstep to understand why they were there. He got a very pinched expression, and took his glasses off to rub at the bridge of his nose. “I did warn you.” Darcy informed him, unrepentant.

“I thought you were planning to keep your distance.” Dr Banner grumbled half-heartedly, sending a baleful look at Fury.

“Then I realised I was being chicken-shit and decided to stop.” Fury deadpanned. Dr Banner flinched, as if the words had been aimed at him with intent to wound, and Darcy snorted. That earned _her_ one of Dr Banner’s baleful stares.

“It’s not the same.” Dr Banner complained.

“It’s not _that_ different.” Darcy groused, and then shook her head. “Can we… maybe, come in and, I don’t know, discuss this over tea like responsible adults?”

Dr Banner heaved a sigh, looking like the entire conversation was causing him pain, but he backed away from the doorway and made a beeline for the open-plan kitchen of his apartment. Darcy and Fury followed him inside and, after a little dance of communication that involved a lot of pointed looks and eyebrows, they sat down in the living room area. Darcy chose the large plush armchair, while Fury claimed one third of the large couch.

“What sort of tea would you like?” Dr Banner asked, leaning over the bar-counter of his kitchen.

“Pumpkin spice?” Darcy asked.

Dr Banner looked pained. “I have ginger and cinnamon tea.” He offered flatly.

“Close enough.” Darcy chirped.

Dr Banner looked over at Fury, who simply said “I’ll have what you’re having,” to which Dr Banner nodded, and disappeared back into the kitchen. Darcy blew out a heavy breath, and Fury leaned over to cover her hand and still the restless tapping of her fingers. After a moment of staring, Darcy slumped, tension bleeding out of her all at once. Fury smiled faintly, and sat up straight again.

Watching, Loki was impressed by just how quickly the pair of them had developed this wordless understanding of each other. It made him think back to when he had first met Tony, and how quickly they had connected, how easy it had been to fall in love with him, even then, under the belief that they weren’t soulmates, and the first time he’d met Pepper, and the instant understanding they’d shared, just over the course of one conversation.

He could understand all too well Dr Banner’s fear in the face of it, though. The conviction that his love was poisonous, that he had already broken everything else he loved just by being himself, and that his soulmates couldn’t possibly be an exception. Loki was just more selfish than Dr Banner, more selfish, and perhaps more lucky. After all, Loki had been gifted proof of how well Tony and Pepper suited him long before he realised exactly who they were to him. Dr Banner did not have that proof to combat the fear. Not yet, and not ever, if he persisted in shutting them out.

As it seemed he was intent on, Loki mused, watching as Dr Banner returned to the living area with three mugs which he shared out, and then hesitated over where to sit. His only real option was next to Fury, which Loki was entirely certain had been done by design, and reluctantly, Dr Banner sat, although he sat _very_ close to the arm of the couch. Silence swelled between all three of them, and even though he wasn’t present, Loki could still feel the weight of it.

Eventually, Fury sighed. “I’ve met the Hulk.” He began, startling the other two.

“I know.” Dr Banner agreed, still clutching his mug a little too tightly. “He- _I_ wrecked your Hellicarrier.” And wasn’t _that_ interesting? Loki propped his chin on his hand, elbow braced on the arm of the throne, and wondered at that pronoun shift.

Fury rather pointedly didn’t react to that, though. “Before that.” He corrected, and Dr Banner’s eyes widened. “I was there to observe one of General Ross’s ham-fisted attempts to bring you in. From my observations, I came to the conclusion that Dr Ross’s speculations on the nature of your condition were entirely accurate.”

Dr Banner flinched, and looked away, and it was Darcy who actually answered Fury. “What speculations?”

Fury considered her for a moment, and then turned a rather pointed look on Dr Banner. Darcy, too, turned to look at him, waiting with a breathless sort of expectancy to see whether he would be willing to answer her or not. Dr Banner’s gaze flickered between them and away, and then he sighed. “That the Hulk is a super-soldier serum powered alter-ego formed by the interaction of healing nanites and my broken psyche in an attempt to mend the trauma I suffered as a child.” He stated, in a bland, unfeeling tone that Loki suspected covered up a great deal of hurt.

Darcy’s lips quirked into an understanding little smile. “Sounds a lot like MPD to me. Or, whatever they’re calling it these days…”

“Dissociative Identity Disorder.” Fury interjected.

“Right.” Darcy agreed, pointing finger-guns at him with the hand that wasn’t holding her tea.

Dr Banner gave them both another one of those baleful stares. “Typically, DID alter-egos aren’t anywhere _near_ as aggressive or destructive as the Other Guy. Even without the super-soldier serum, I-” He paused, seemed to choke on the words. “I’m… hardly a typical case.”

“Perhaps not, but as human psychology goes, you’re not exactly unique, either.” Fury drawled.

Dr Banner huffed a bitter laugh, and it looked like he might have something to say to that, but Darcy interrupted. “You’re not broken.” She said suddenly. Dr Banner and Fury both looked at her, one in surprise, the other with scepticism written all over his face. “You’re not.” Darcy insisted. “You might be a bit damaged, a bit battered, but show me a single person who isn’t.”

“You seem to be doing alright.” Dr Banner countered softly.

Darcy’s expression crumpled, even as she laughed. “Imposter syndrome.” She countered. “Or whatever you call it when your mum is so desperate to convince you you’re not unlovable just because your dad’s not around that she overcompensates, and you spend your entire childhood trying to convince yourself you’re not special because the weight of that terrifying, only to constantly wonder if maybe you are, because you’re a bit too smart and a bit too weird but it’s not really _you_ , it’s just… parts of you, and not the parts of you that… _matter_.” She shrugged. “Then, you know, you find out that your dad is _Tony freaking Stark_ and there’s another minor identity crisis to refuse to face right there.”

Dr Banner smiled ruefully at her, but then shook his head. “It’s not-”

“I know it’s not the same. I’m not trying to compare anything, okay? It’s just… you’re not _broken_ , Bruce, you’re just a bit more battered than the rest of us. That doesn’t make you- You’re not somehow fundamentally _wrong_ just because life fucked you over, okay?”

Dr Banner shook his head again. “You don’t-” He stopped, and rose to his feet. “You have no _idea_ \- I’m a _monster_ , Darcy, and I don’t just mean the Other Guy. I’ve _always_ been a monster.”

“Bullshit.” Darcy retorted, looking mightily offended. Dr Banner just laughed, a sick sounding laugh full of self-loathing and mockery. “Bull _shit_.” Darcy repeated, edging closer towards genuine anger. “Why the hell would you even-”

“You’re not your father, Bruce.” Fury interrupted.

Dr Banner flinched like Fury had struck him, curling away and hunching in as though to protect himself from a mortal wound. “What?” Darcy asked in confusion, which only made Dr Banner retreat further, going so far as to physically step back, away from her. “Bruce…” She began, half rising out of her chair, but she froze when Dr Banner only backed away further.

“I- I’m sorry, I think- I think you need to go.” Dr Banner stammered, closing his eyes and curling shaking hands into fists.

Darcy blinked. Then she set her jaw, stood, and walked over to Dr Banner at a slow, deliberate pace. He didn’t back away from her, but he looked like he wanted to, eyes wide behind his glasses and his breathing carefully measured despite how it was shaking. “I think you need to tell me why this is such a hot button for you.” She countered, and although her tone was gentle, there was steel underneath it. Loki was rather proud of her.

“No.” Dr Banner said, abrupt and absolute, and then he laughed. It came out rather more rough than it ought. “Darcy, I’m not kidding. You need to _go_.”

“I won’t leave you when you’re hurting.” Darcy insisted, reaching out to put a hand on his arm, a gesture of comfort. Dr Banner stared at her in disbelief, incredulous and frustrated and, under all of that, terribly, terribly afraid.

“Darcy, give him some space.” Fury instructed, as green began to show under Dr Banner’s skin.

Darcy glared over her shoulder at him, but he just met her stare levelly, and eventually she rolled her eyes and took three large, conspicuous steps backwards. “There? Happy now?” She asked snidely.

“Ecstatic.” Fury deadpanned, and Darcy’s irritation broke with a delighted snicker. Dr Banner gaped at them, mouthing wordlessly, and Fury turned his level stare on him instead. “Listen to me.” He insisted, in the sort of tone that insisted on obedience. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

Dr Banner blinked luminous green eyes. Stared. “What?” He snarled.

“We. Are not. Going. To hurt. You.” Fury repeated. “There is no threat here, nothing you need to fight. The one who hurt you is _dead_ , and we are not going to let anyone else hurt you again. Not even yourself.”

The green tinge leached out of Dr Banner’s skin, fading slowly and leaving only bewilderment behind. “Oh, hey, looks like that worked.” Darcy said cheerfully. “So it really is a defence mechanism. That’s pretty cool.”

At those words, Loki looked down at his own hand, semi-visible through the vision of events a whole world away, and let blue bleed over the pale digits. A bitter little smile twisted his lips as he refocused on the scene he was eavesdropping on. There really were far too many similarities there to be comfortable with, but because of those similarities, he rather suspected that Dr Banner – or, well, Loki supposed he ought to get used to calling him Bruce at _some_ point – would be ready to begin listening, now.

“I don’t… How?” Bruce asked, looking between his soulmates.

“Dr Ross was right.” Fury informed him, sounding inordinately pleased with himself.

Bruce frowned at him, looking as though that hadn’t cleared anything up at all. He looked to Darcy, who shrugged. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” She asked. “He’s a _defence_ mechanism. Okay, so past trauma has got your defence mechanism on a hair-trigger, but still. As long as there’s no threat, there’s no need for a defence, right?”

Bruce opened his mouth, stopped, and then shook his head. Wordlessly, he took his glasses off and started cleaning them with the sleeve of his shirt, watching the motion of his fingers with almost meditative contemplation. “Then why…” he asked slowly, “does _other people’s_ fear set the Other-” He stopped, swallowed, tried again. “Why does other people’s fear set the Hulk off?”

“At the risk of quoting Star Wars…” Fury drawled pointedly.

There was a moment of silence, and then Darcy snorted. “Oh my god, you _nerd_.” She accused, sounding delighted. Bruce let out a soft, tired little laugh, and replaced his glasses.

“Guilty.” Fury conceded without shame.

“I still don’t…” Bruce sighed. “Intellectually, I understand your point, but… it’s not as though the Hulk thinks it through logically, that frightened people are more likely to act rashly, and so may become a threat, it’s just… it’s _instinctive_. Like-” He grimaced. “Like a predator, sensing weakness.” He finished bitterly, looking away.

Fury raised his one good eye to the ceiling in exasperation. “Of course it’s instinctive.” He said with a touch of impatience to his voice. “Forgive me for bringing up a subject you vetoed, Bruce, but…” He began, meeting the other man’s gaze before asking, surprisingly gently. “Why did your father try to kill you?”

Darcy’s jaw dropped open, and she turned to stare at Bruce, who was holding himself very, very still in the wake of Fury’s question. “He did _what_?!” She demanded, horrified.

“He tried to kill me…” Bruce stated, in a strangely distant voice, the end of his sentence trailing off in a way that indicated there was more to come. He swallowed, and then his lips twisted into a wry little smile. “He tried to kill me because he was afraid of me.” He concluded, nodding.

“Afraid of you?!” Darcy yelped, entirely indignant.

Bruce opened his mouth, and then faltered. He met Fury’s gaze with a plea in his eyes. “Could you… fill her in? I don’t think I can- talk about it…” He asked haltingly.

Fury nodded. “I can fill her in later, if you don’t want to hear it.” He offered.

Bruce shook his head. “No, it’s… if I need to, I’ll just…” He waved a hand vaguely towards the bedroom door.

“Dr Brian Banner was an atomic physicist employed by the US military to research the super-soldier serum.” Fury began, and Darcy sat down on the edge of the coffee table to listen, while Bruce turned his back and went to look out of the large floor-to-ceiling windows. “Unknown to his employers, Brian Banner tested some of his attempts on himself. When Bruce was was born, his father became convinced that he had passed on the effects of the super-soldier serum, and that this had made Bruce… ‘monstrous’.”

Darcy’s expression went hard in a way that was endearingly reminiscent of her father. “He is dead, right? You said he was dead. He’d better be dead, because if he isn’t, I’m going to kill him.”

Bruce snorted. “He’s dead.” He assured her dryly.

“He became obsessed with finding a way to reverse the effects, and his mania eventually got him fired.” Fury went on, before Darcy could ask whatever question she was obviously planning to. She narrowed her eyes at him, but closed her mouth. “He retaliated by blowing up the military facility where he had been working and then attempting to murder his son.”

“He came at me with a kitchen knife.” Bruce interjected, his tone remarkably mild. “My mother got in the way. I didn’t remember that for… a long time, though. I didn’t remember any of it until… until the Hulk.” He admitted.

Darcy made a tiny little wounded noise, and shoved her glasses up to press her fingers against her eyes as she sniffed back tears. Then she dropped her hands and lurched to her feet, and then cautiously approached Bruce. “Hey.” She said softly from behind his shoulder, in a voice that wobbled but was aiming determinedly for cheerful despite that. “So, quick question, cause sometimes people are like ‘no touchy’…” Bruce choked out an incredulous little laugh, and turned to face her with a strangely vulnerable look on his face.

Loki was aware that there was a lot of subtext there that he was missing, especially when Bruce answered the question before Darcy even had to ask. “I could go for a hug.” He said softly, and Darcy didn’t wait another second before throwing her arms around him and clinging on for dear life.

Bruce very tentatively set his hands on her waist, and then cautiously slid them around until his arms were wrapped around her. He turned his face into her hair for a moment, a look of acute agony crossing his face, before he looked up. Then he uncurled one arm and held it out to Fury in invitation. Loki suspected that, had he known he was being spied upon, Fury would not have allowed the smile that spread across his face as he stood and went to join them. It was a raw, vulnerable expression, tinged with relief and a tired sort of empathy. As he tucked himself in behind Darcy, wrapping his arms around both of them, and allowing Bruce to wrap an arm around him in turn, Loki decided he’d seen enough, and let the vision of Midgard fade away.

* * *

Dream walking was just about the only thing keeping Loki sane these days. Asgard was as stagnant and unchanging as ever, and only her nightly escapes into her soulmates’ dreams were keeping her from causing a bit of chaos just for something to _do_. Tonight, however, she wasn’t going to see Tony or Pepper. Instead, she turned her feet onto different dream paths, brushing past Tony’s and Pepper’s on her way to Darcy’s dreamscape.

She found herself in the grips of a nightmare. The walls of of the house she stood in were like a caricature of Midgardian normality, all pale pastel shades and empty photo frames, but it was as thin as a soap bubble, and Loki could feel the ugly dread skittering beneath like a plague. There was a little girl hiding under the stairs, hands clamped over her ears and face buried in her knees as a mannequin from a clothing store manoeuvred its way into a different room.

“Darcy?” Loki called softly, and the little girl jumped, head coming up to stare at Loki in terror. It made something sour crawl up the back of Loki’s throat, knowing that she probably deserved that look. But then Darcy surprised her.

“Mom?” Darcy asked, beginning to crawl out of her hiding place.

Loki smiled despite herself. “I can be, if you want.” She agreed, casting another look around the dreamscape, reassessing. It was clearly some sort of twisted vision of a childhood home, some lingering uncertainty about her origins, Loki supposed, but she was distracted from her contemplation when the young Darcy crashed into her in a fierce hug.

“Why don’t we go see what your father’s up to, hmm?” Loki suggested, hoping that by triggering the associations she can get Darcy somewhere more familiar, and also back to her proper age. Darcy nodded, and let Loki usher her through a doorway. Sure enough, Tony’s lab was on the other side, and Darcy looked much more grown up as she looked around. Loki noticed that a lot of the machinery looked wrong, cobbled together out of spare parts rather than the more streamlined assembly Tony preferred.

“Dad?” Darcy called, and got no answer. “Dad?!”

Loki grimaced. That part didn’t take much effort to interpret. “Darcy.” Loki interrupted, and Darcy whirled on her, eyes wild with fear again. “Where do you go when you want to feel safe?” Loki asked her, because there was no use in trying to talk to Darcy when she was so caught up by her subconscious fears. She needed to calm her down first, and _then_ they could get back to business.

“The roof.” Darcy told her, sounding a little confused.

“Shall we, then?” Loki suggested.

Slowly, Darcy nodded, and led the way over to a set of stairs that really shouldn’t have been there, through a door that shouldn’t have been there, onto a flat roof that most certainly didn’t belong to Stark Tower. There were stars in the dark sky above them, and a vaguely familiar desert town stretched out below them. Darcy ambled over to the edge and plopped herself down to sit with her legs swinging out over nothing. Loki joined her, enjoying the more tranquil feel of this location.

Then something below them blew up fire blazing brighter than it should, and revealing the Destroyer marching through the streets. Loki winced. “Yikes.” Darcy said, surprisingly calmly.

“I never did apologise for that, did I?” Loki mused with a touch of distaste, though whether that was for the concept of apologising or her own actions, she wasn’t quite sure.

“Nope.” Darcy agreed, passing Loki a bottle of Midgardian ale out of nowhere. “But I figured you were. Sorry, I mean. If only because of who my Dad is, which is… probably not the best moral stance.” She mused thoughtfully.

Loki’s lips twitched, and she let out a tiny huff of a laugh. “I may not be quite as irrational as I was then-” She gestured below them where another explosion was going off, to indicate what she meant. “-but you are _vastly_ mistaken if you’re expecting _morality_ from me.”

Darcy snorted at that. “Truth.” She agreed, toasting Loki with her ale.

“Darcy, you should know that you’re dreaming right now.” Loki informed her, before the dream could take another turn and drop them back into somewhere that would upset Darcy too much for her to listen to Loki properly.

Darcy turned to blink at her behind her glasses, a frown slowly pulling her brows down and in. “What?” She asked.

“A moment ago we were in Stark Tower, and a moment before that, you were… perhaps twelve years old. You’ll agree that that is not something that could have happened if you were awake.” Loki pointed out, and then gestured below them again. “And not a single piece of _this_ makes sense, either.”

“That’s just weird.” Darcy declared. “I tried the lucid dreaming thing before, and I never managed to get it to work. I always sort of half suspected people were making that shit up.” She explained, looking around with more interest. “I… don’t think I want to be watching Puente Antiguo get blown up. Can’t we have something a bit less destructive? How about fireworks? I like fireworks.”

“Did you ever see some of the new year’s displays in places like London or Tokyo?” Loki prompted.

“On youtube, yeah.” Darcy confirmed, and as the association was made, the night’s sky lit up with brilliant flares and wheels and sparkles of colour that were all far, far closer than they ought to be. Darcy cooed, staring in awe for a long time before glancing back at Loki. “So, dreaming, huh? You’re not something my subconscious made up to represent my issues, are you?”

Loki chuckled. “No.” She agreed. “I’m just visiting.”

“Yeah, Dad mentioned you do that.” Darcy said. “Gotta say, I can’t decide if that’s cool or kind of creepy. I sort of feel like a person’s dreams ought to be private.”

“Are you asking me to leave?” Loki challenged.

“No, just saying.” Darcy replied with a shrug.

They sat and watched the fireworks in silence for a while, as Loki considered how to approach the subject she wanted to raise. Then she was distracted. “Is that a dragon?” She asked, staring at the orange shape twisting in the sky. It looked vaguely familiar, although she couldn’t figure out why.

Darcy laughed. “Oh, I’ve got to try this lucid dreaming thing more often! I never thought I’d get to see that like it was actually, you know, real! It’s from Lord of the Rings.” She added, catching Loki’s puzzled expression.

“Ah, I recall.” Loki breathed. “One of your quaint little Midgardian tales. Ridiculously inaccurate, of course, but fun in its way, I suppose.”

“Inaccurate?” Darcy giggled. “You’re such a pedant.”

“You yourself know exactly how inaccurate it is.” Loki reminded her. “Admittedly Malekith and his kin were long removed from the rest of their people, but you must admit they would have been vastly out of place in Tolkien’s Middle Earth.”

“A bit.” Darcy agreed. “Although the pointy ears were accurate. And cute.” She paused, and then launched onwards in a rush. “Okay, I’ve been trying to guess what this is about, because I’m pretty sure you didn’t come wandering into my dream to talk about the shenanigans with the elves in London, but I’m out of guesses, so would you say something already? I’m dying here.”

“It’s tangentially related to the shenanigans with the elves in London.” Loki admitted wryly, leaning back on her hands and staring up at the sky. “After all, that is where you found him, is it not?”

“Wait, this is about Nick?” Darcy asked, turning her head to stare at Loki instead of the sky again. “How do you even know about Nick? No, stupid question, Dad probably threw a fit about it at you, didn’t he? He’s _such_ a hypocrite. You’re _so_ much more older than him than Nick is to me.” Darcy paused. “You know what I mean.”

“I do.” Loki confirmed, inclining her head. “However, he’s not alone in his concerns.”

“Oh, my god, really?!” Darcy yelped indignantly. “ _You_ -! What?! I don’t even know where to _begin_ with all the things wrong with that, oh my _god_! _You_ , of all people, have absolutely _no right_ to judge me, at all, ever!”

Loki chuckled and slanted Darcy a deeply fond look. “I do not mean the age difference, specifically. I am more concerned by the discrepancy in lifespan.” She explained.

Darcy frowned at her, her entire face scrunching up in confusion. “Nick and Bruce are both human, more or less, why would the lifespan be an issue if the age difference isn’t? I know I’m probably going to outlive them, and I’m _so_ not done freaking out about that, but-”

“On the contrary.” Loki interrupted, startling Darcy silent. “If they continue on as they have, they are far, far more likely to outlive you.”

Darcy might not have the scientific genius of her father, but she was a very smart woman all the same. She put the pieces together faster than Loki had honestly expected. “I mean, Bruce has the Hulk, right? And I guess if ageing was treated as an injury, then Bruce could live for, like, ever, but are you telling me that _Nick_ has some sort of super-long lifespan? Oh my god, he’s not an alien, is he? Is he an alien?”

“No, he is of Midgard, same as you and Dr Banner.” Loki assured her.

“Oh, good, I’m not going to have to yell at him for lying to me, then.” Darcy sighed. “So, what, then? Why’s he going to live longer than me?”

“I know not the details, but Heimdall tells me that he has been watching your soulmate for a long time due to his yearly consumption of some super-soldier elixir that is extending his lifespan indefinitely.” Loki explained.

“It’s always a fucking super-soldier serum, isn’t it?” Darcy asked, wrinkling her nose.

Loki gave a small hum of disagreement, shrugging as she leaned forwards again. “Sometimes it’s aliens.” She countered, and Darcy snorted her way into laughter. Loki just watched her, waiting patiently for Darcy to catch up.

Finally, Darcy realised that Loki wasn’t actually making a joke, and her mouth fell open a little. “Wait, what? No, seriously. What are you saying?” She demanded, shifting so that one leg was curled flat on the roof, her foot tucked under her other knee, so that she could stare at Loki straight on.

“I am saying that if you dislike being the only short-lived member of a very long-lived family, I do currently have a solution for that.” Loki replied innocently. “I _am_ the current ruler of Asgard, after all, I wouldn’t even have to steal anything.”

“So, what? I’d become an Asgardian, like you and Thor?” Darcy asked, and then she gasped. “Holy shit, would that make me a _goddess_? How awesome would _that_ be?”

Loki chuckled, shaking her head in fond exasperation. “You would be an Asgardian in name, if you wished, as I am, but you would not be an Asgardian as Thor is, through half his genetics.” She explained, and then reached out to curl a hand over Darcy’s cheek. “Becoming a goddess would take a lot more than just consuming the apple, you understand? You would need to spend decades in Asgard, or one of the other more magically saturated realms, discovering your domain and mastering any powers or abilities that would come with it.”

“Is that what you did?” Darcy asked.

Loki shrugged carelessly. “Thor and I grew up in Asgard. By the time we were adolescents, we had already found our domains and settled into our powers.”

“Well, then I guess that can wait until I’m, like, bored of my current life. I figure that has to happen eventually, if I’m going to live forever or something.”

“Several thousand years, at least. The apples grant us some measure of youth and resilience against the ravages of time, not immortality. We can still die of old age, theoretically.” Loki explained. “Although the Allfather is making a good showing of not dying, despite his increasing senility.” She added distastefully. Darcy snorted at her, and Loki allowed her grudge to be pushed to the back of her mind again, as she lowered her hand to give Darcy a solemn look. “So, is that a yes to a golden apple of youth, Darcy Lewis?”

Darcy didn’t even hesitate to nod. “Yeah. Yes. I mean, shit, did you think I’d say _no_?” She demanded abruptly.

“You will outlive most of your friends by a significant margin.” Loki warned her.

Darcy did sober up somewhat at that. “Yeah, I guess… that’s gonna be hard. But I’m going to have you and Dad and Pepper, and Nick and Bruce, apparently. And… it’s not like people don’t lose friends anyway, you know? That doesn’t mean it’s not worth having them in the first place. So it’s not like I think I’m going to be all lonely.”

Loki inclined her head, both in agreement, and because she was a little impressed by Darcy’s attitude. “Very well.” She agreed, but before she could say anything else, Darcy interrupted her.

“Oh, hey, that’s a thought, what about Jane?”

“What about her?” Loki asked, although she had a sneaking suspicion.

“Well, Odin said all that shit about her not being worthy or some rubbish, didn’t he? But since _you’re_ the ruler of Asgard now, couldn’t you, like, give her an apple, make her an Asgardian, because fuck Odin anyway?” She asked brightly.

“Actually, I could not.” Loki informed her. “Not legally, anyway.”

Darcy gave her a befuddled, almost annoyed look. “Wait, why not? You can do it for me, but not for _Jane_ ? How does _that_ work?”

Loki huffed and matched her stare with an impatient one of her own. “Darcy, I can legally offer you Asgardian citizenship, and the apple of youth that comes with it, because I have claimed you as my daughter and ward. I cannot offer Dr Foster the same in any legal manner unless and until Thor _marries_ her.” She paused to consider. “You may steal one for her, if you wish, of course, while my back is turned, but that would not give her the same right of access as you would have.”

“Oh. Huh.” Darcy blinked rapidly, then nodded. “Okay, fair. But, hang on, right of access? What difference does it make, really, whether the apple is, like, legit or not?”

“The effect is no different, but the legalities that follow are _very_ different. You would be a citizen of Asgard, where your father is not, which gives you rights under Asgardian law that he does not have. It also makes you somewhat beholden to Asgardian law, but as I do not believe you are intending to reside there any time soon, that’s irrelevant for now. It also gives you the right to enter Idunn’s orchard, and to pick what apples you need. Tony and Pepper do not have that right at the moment.”

“Okay.” Darcy agreed, chewing her lip in thought. “So, wait, how much of an effect will the apple actually have? Like you call them apples of youth, so, please, god, tell me it’s not going to make me look like a teenager or something.”

Chuckling, Loki shook her head. “No, you will not appear any younger than you presently are. You will cease to age in any visible manner. Your appetite will increase, and you will gain some measure of strength, endurance, and faster healing as a simple side effect of how the apple alters your body. You will not have quite the same abilities as myself or Thor, but it will be comparable.”

Darcy positively lit up. “You mean Bruce is going to have to quit treating me like I’m fragile?!” She enthused.

“I would suggest you don’t provoke the Hulk to actually attack you. Given what he reduced _me_ to, it is likely that if he truly put his mind to it, he could still kill you, but… it is very, very unlikely that he would be able to do it by accident anymore.”

“ _Sweet_!” Darcy breathed.

Loki got to her feet and held a hand out to Darcy. She accepted it and allowed Loki to pull her up as well. “I will await your presence on the morrow, then, Darcy. I will have Heimdall open the Bifrost for you at noon, so I would advise you to be outside by then.”

“Okay. Hey, can I bring anyone? Like, Dad and Pep?” Darcy asked, halting Loki in the process of turning to go.

Loki’s heart twisted with longing, and she decided in that moment that there was absolutely no point denying herself what she wanted, even if the traditionalists might throw a fit at so many ‘mortals’ being in Asgard. “Of course.” She acquiesced graciously, and then smirked. “Thank you.” Darcy just grinned and shrugged it off, and Loki slid out of her dream as though she’d never been there, leaving Darcy on a rooftop, watching fireworks.

The next day couldn’t come soon enough. Loki gave his orders to Heimdall before the sun was even up, and spent the rest of the morning thoroughly distracted. It only got worse the closer they crept to midday, and by the time the sun was almost at its zenith, everyone had lost their patience with Loki. Loki hardly noticed or cared. “By the Norns, Loki, would you _focus_?!” Sif demanded, slamming a hand down on the grand table in the center of Asgard’s main feasting hall. Loki dragged his eyes away from the doors and stared at her, too startled to be offended. “What in Asgard’s name has you so distracted?” She added, narrowing her eyes at him as though she suspected him of plotting something nefarious.

“The guests we are expecting.” Loki answered honestly, without answering anything at all.

Sif glowered at him, and Loki smiled beatifically back. “Yes, I did notice you are planning a celebratory feast without telling anyone what is going on.” Several of the courtiers around them were leaning in to eavesdrop without an ounce of subtlety in them. Loki did his best not to let on that he’d noticed, even though it rankled.

“At such short notice, too!” Volstagg bemoaned. “There’s hardly been the proper time for making the _best_ dishes.”

“Oh my god, are you _skimping_ on my first Asgardian feast?” A new voice complained, and Loki turned back towards the doors with a far more genuine smile. Heimdall was off to one side, gesturing the three mortals into the hall, Darcy in front, and Tony and Pepper behind, arm in arm. “That’s so _rude_ , Mom.” Darcy concluded delightedly, setting off gasps and whispers of scandalised incredulity around the room. Loki was so proud of her he thought he might burst.

“Darcy Lewis, be welcome in Asgard.” Loki greeted formally. “Anthony Stark, Virginia Potts, be welcome, also.” Tony’s nose wrinkled and Pepper rolled her eyes, but then they were hugging Loki and kissing him properly for the first time in weeks and weeks. Dream kisses were just not the same.

“You look stressed.” Tony pointed out when he let Loki back up for air. “You should come home.”

“Soon, darling. Mother will be recovered soon, and then I can return home.” Loki assured him, longing for that day more fiercely than ever. Being forced to stay in Asgard just made him dwell on everything he hated about the place. “Come.” He instructed, guiding the trio of Midgardians up to the small dais in front of the blazing fireplace, in which an aurochs was being roasted. Idunn met them there, looking severe. Loki knew that she very likely suspected that he was responsible for the periodic loss of some of her precious apples, and didn’t take the expression to heart. “We celebrate, today, a new addition to the mightiest warriors of Asgard.” He said, projecting his voice, and enjoying the susurrus of whispers that rippled through the hall, yet again. “Darcy Lewis has shown her worth in battle against some of the oldest of Asgard’s foes. She has shown courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and great loyalty to those she calls her friends, among which she counts at least one Prince of Asgard.”

“At least.” Darcy agreed with an eyebrow raised.

“As the ward of the Prince Regent, and as the daughter of another part of my soul,” Loki went on, giving Darcy an amused look, “you have the right to all the blessings Asgard can offer. Do you accept?” Loki asked her, even though they both already knew the answer.

“Sure, yeah, lay it on me.” Darcy chirped.

“Atta girl.” Tony whispered gleefully, while Pepper covered her eyes with one hand.

Loki couldn’t have kept the smile off his face if he’d tried, even as he had to recite tired old formality. “Do you swear to uphold the honour of Asgard in your conduct, and to safeguard all the nine realms as you would your own home?”

“Sure. I mean, I’ll do my best and all. Wait, this isn’t, like, some sort of binding magical vow, is it? Because if it is, I’m not agreeing without, like, some proper clauses in there about, you know, not having to fight _all_ the things, because I can’t actually be everywhere at once.” Darcy rambled.

“It is not.” Loki assured her. “You merely need to confirm for the audience that you intend to uphold the spirit of the agreement.”

“Oh, then, yeah. Sure. I mean, who wouldn’t, right?” Darcy confirmed flippantly.

“Indeed.” Loki murmured, turning to Idunn, who sourly handed over a golden apple, which he then presented to Darcy with a flourish. “With the blessings of the Prince Regent and the Queen of Asgard.” Loki said formally.

Darcy took the apple and began to eat it without any more ceremony, only to pause two bites in to glance around the hall. “You know it’s, like, really freaking weird that you’re all just standing around to watch a girl eat an apple, right? Like, that’s genuinely creepy.” She took another bite, and spoke around her mouthful. “I’m so self-conscious right now. Am I dribbling apple juice down my chin?” She swallowed. “I feel like I’m probably dribbling apple juice down my chin.” She dabbed at her lower lip with her fingers, and then her sleeve, leaving smears of faintly shimmering golden juice behind. “Oh, man, that’s actually really pretty. Do you guys ever, like, juice these mofos? Because that would look so magical.”

“Excuse me, ‘mofos’?” Idunn questioned, looking pained.

Darcy gave her a look like a deer in headlights, apparently only just realising that the woman who grew the golden apples might be somewhat offended to hear them referred to as ‘motherfuckers’. “Midgardian slang.” Loki interjected for her.

“Ah.” Idunn said, and asked no more. Darcy shot Loki a grateful look.

“Eat your apple, Darcy.” Loki chided through his amusement. Darcy ate her apple.

Once she was done, there was a stunned, faintly outraged silence that made Loki want to either cackle or start hexing people. Instead, he just guided his soulmates and his daughter to their places to the left and right of the head of the table, and asked Tony about the goings on of Midgard while he filled his plate. _That_ finally broke the strained atmosphere, and everyone piled in to begin feasting. If there was one thing the Asgardian court knew how to do, it was feast.

“I can’t believe you _did that_.” Sif exclaimed, slamming into a nearby seat.

“I can’t believe that _you_ can’t believe that Loki would do something _exactly_ that scandalous.” Fandrall interjected, swanning in and winking at Darcy, who looked a little impressed by his audacity, if also rather incredulous.

“Did the Queen truly agree to this?” Sif pressed.

“I did.” Frigga confirmed from right behind Sif, making her jump. Loki snickered before he could help himself, earning a furious look from Sif and a vaguely chiding one from his mother. “I cannot stay on my feet for long, or Lady Eir will follow through on her threat to sedate me, but I wanted to come and offer my congratulations in person.” She explained to Darcy, who nodded mutely. “And to welcome my son’s soulmates to our home, of course.” She added, looking over at Tony and Pepper with one eyebrow ever so slightly arched. “It is a pity Asgardian laws are not flexible enough to permit polygamy.”

“A very great pity indeed, Mother.” Loki agreed as solemnly as he was able. Frigga gave him another _look_ , and he smiled at her like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Rolling her eyes at him, Frigga rounded to the other side of Darcy’s seat to lean down and press a kiss to Loki’s cheek. “I’m proud of you, my son.” She murmured in his ear so that no one else could hear, and then left to return to her rest. Loki watched her go, just in case she was more unsteady on her feet than she’d intimated, but while she moved slowly, she was at least strong enough to give the impression of dignity rather than weakness to the court.

“Okay, I’m _pretty_ sure that Loki’s the only Asgardian I’ve slept with, so why exactly are you looking at me like that?” Tony asked, and Loki turned to see him answering Sif’s poisonous glower with an offended scowl.

“ _You_ should not be here.” Sif announced, clipped and furious.

Tony’s eyebrows shot up, and they weren’t the only ones. “What? Did you just say I shouldn’t be here for my own daughter’s immortality ceremony thing? Did I hear that right?” He demanded.

“You are a _mortal_. Asgardian law states that mortals are not permitted-” Sif began.

“Actually,” Pepper interrupted calmly, “as envoys of significant political power from another of the Nine Realms, we have every right to visit for a state function involving one of our people. I believe the clause is recorded in volume three of your most recent compilation of Asgardian law. Would you like me to have someone fetch the book, so we can check?” Loki could do nothing but prop his cheek on his fist and watch Pepper with blatant admiration.

“ _What_ political power?” Sif sneered. “You are no monarch.”

“Of course not, we’re not _savages_.” Tony retorted. “We _elect_ our leaders, sweetheart, like civilised people.” Sif’s knife screeched across her plate as her fist clenched around the handle. “I’m not actually sure what the Asgardian equivalent to a CEO is. Lucy-Loo?” Tony asked, turning to him.

“Perhaps a General?” Loki mused, then shook his head. “No, you have those, also. An archmage. Your domain is less a place and more the collection of people you hold power and responsibility for, although in your case, they would be employees rather than apprentices.”

“Huh. So, yeah, Pepper here is probably the most powerful Archmage-equivalent on Earth.” Tony concluded smugly.

“And _yourself_?” Sif challenged.

“Me?” Tony echoed, and then shrugged. “I’m her plus one.”

Loki laughed before he could help himself. “I think that is perhaps the most humble thing I’ve ever heard you say, darling.” He announced, delighted.

Tony shrugged with feigned nonchalance “If we get into a dick-measuring contest, they’re going to want me to kick ass to prove it, and I didn’t bring my ass-kicking pants with me.” He explained. That was a lie, and Loki knew it. Wordlessly, he reached out and brushed his fingers over the homing devices implanted under the skin of Tony’s wrist pointedly. To anyone else, it would look like nothing more than a subtle affectionate gesture, but Loki knew that Tony would understand that Loki understood.

“You are a mortal. You could not kick the ass of an Asgardian _novice_.” Sif interrupted scornfully.

“Holy crap, _wow_.” Darcy yelped before Tony could do more than turn his ‘bitch please’ expression on Sif for interrupting the moment. “I can’t even. What is it with the racism going on here? Like, I know Asgard is kind of backwards, but Christ on a cracker, that superiority complex is big enough to need it’s own zip code.” Sif honestly looked more bewildered than offended at that tirade, and Darcy was looking back with a touch of betrayal in her expression.

Loki smiled his _sweetest_ smile. “Don’t take it personally, Darcy. Sif is usually one of the more fair-minded of Asgard’s people. It is not, actually, mortals in general that she has a problem with, it is these two mortals in particular, I believe.” He turned that smile on Sif. “Or am I wrong?”

Sif turned red in an instant. “ _Ohh!_ ” Tony said. “She’s _your_ ex, not mine. Huh, I don’t think I’ve ever been on that side of the equation before.” Sif abruptly stood, hands clenched into fists, and then stalked away from the table, leaving everyone in a startled silence for several moments. “Well, at least now I know you’ve always had good taste. She _is_ pretty hot.” Tony said into the silence.

“ _Tony!_ ” Pepper exclaimed in exasperation, burying her face in her hands.

Loki chuckled, but he was distracted by the way Darcy was still staring after Sif, frowning. “Darcy?” Loki prompted quietly. “Are you well?”

“Yeah.” Darcy replied. Then she shook her head, and rapped her knuckles decisively on the table as she got up from her seat. “B.R.B.” She announced, making everyone except Tony and Pepper frown.

“She means she’ll be right back.” Tony informed Loki. “Did you really just text-speak out loud, kiddo? Because that’s genuinely _terrible_ and you need to stop.” He called after Darcy. “You’d better not be the sort of person to say lol, either!”

“Lol is in the dictionary now, you fossil!” Darcy yelled back, and Tony mimed taking an arrow to the chest, slumping onto Pepper’s shoulder dramatically. Loki chuckled at his antics, but he was a bit distracted, still. He had a feeling he knew exactly where Darcy was going, and while he was confident she could handle herself – and that Tony would no more have let her come to Asgard unprotected as he would have come unprotected himself – he still felt a little uneasy at the notion of Sif taking her anger out on Darcy.

With another brief touch to Tony’s wrist, and a moment of eye contact with Pepper, who nodded, Loki rose and followed her, pulling a spell of invisibility about himself as he threaded through the crowds. He found Darcy joining Sif on a balcony overlooking the sweep of the golden city down to the sea, the Bifrost only just visible off to the left. Sif tensed when Darcy stepped up beside her, but otherwise didn’t move or speak.

They stood in silence for a while, just taking in the view, and slowly, Sif’s shoulders relaxed. “So, my dad is, like, an expert at winding people up.” Darcy began thoughtfully.

“He is well suited to Loki, then.” Sif gritted out.

Darcy laughed. “I’m just saying, you know, don’t- try not to, like, take it personally or anything. Dad just gets like that when he’s… I don’t wanna say vulnerable, exactly, but when he doesn’t know the lay of the land.”

“A good offence is the best defence?” Sif suggested wearily.

Darcy made finger-guns at her. “Yeah, that exactly. And Pep, well, she’s been told all her life that she doesn’t belong, you know? It’s not easy for women to get to where she’s got, on Midgard, so you kind of stepped on a trigger, there, with her, which is why she got all cold at you.”

Sif hung her head between her shoulders. “I will apologise.” She said after what was clearly a brief internal struggle. “I am well acquainted with such dismissal, and I- I should not have visited it upon another.”

“Yeah, I figured you’d get that. Can’t be easy being a lady warrior in Asgard, huh?” Darcy prompted.

“Not at all.” Sif agreed heavily, and then she gave a bitter laugh. “It is a constant struggle, even now, to prove my worth.”

“Is that why you’re still mad at Loki?” Darcy asked bluntly.

Sif flinched, her hands clenching into fists. “He is a _liar_ , and a heartless _wretch_.” She spat. Darcy’s eyebrows flew up in a manner very reminiscent of her father. “He does not _deserve-_ ” Sif cut herself off and turned her face away from Darcy.

“Haven’t found your soulmate, yet?” Darcy asked, in a tone of realisation.

Sif turned a burning, furious glare on Darcy. “I have no soulmate.”

Darcy’s eyes widened. “Oh. Huh. I guess that’s about as whack in Asgard as having two is down on Midgard?” She wondered.

“‘Whack’?” Sif echoed, a touch of a snarl still in her voice.

“Weird, odd, ‘unnatural’.” Darcy explained, giving the last word a sneer of distaste as she said it.

“Indeed.” Sif agreed stiffly.

“You know, it’s not that weird in Midgard. Loads of people have no soulmark.” Darcy told her, and Sif frowned at her. “I mean, some of them, like, lost their soulmate when they were too young to remember, or some of them haven’t got their soulmark yet, but, some of them just… never get one. There are, like, mark-less dating sites and everything.”

“That may be, but in Asgard, it is…” Sif retorted, trailing off before she could finish with a twisted expression. “I am alone.” She concluded in a strained, aching whisper.

“I know that feel.” Darcy commiserated.

Sif startled. “You have no soulmark either?”

“Oh, no, I’ve got two. Just like Dad.” Darcy replied with a rolling shrug, ignoring the way Sif’s expression closed off again at that admission. “But I reckon that’s got to be the same level of ‘eww what the fuck’ on Midgard as having no soulmark is up here. No one’s ever heard of it, and if you tell them, they usually think you’re lying for attention or something. I had more than one epic crying jag as a kid, because of people saying shit like that to me.” She moved forwards to brace her elbows on the railing, staring out at the sea contemplatively. “It’s super lonely, having something that important be… so alien to everyone around you.”

“I suppose… I never considered it that way, before.” Sif murmured, moving to stand beside Darcy, one hand resting on the railing. A tiny, faintly wry smile flitted across her face. “I always thought Loki was so lucky, to have two.” She paused, and then scowled. “ _Never_ tell him I said that.”

Darcy laughed. “Scout’s honour.”

Sif considered that. “I assume these ‘scouts’ are a notably honourable sect on Midgard?” She questioned dubiously.

“Yeah, basically.” Darcy confirmed. They lapsed into silence for a while, once again simply taking in the view. “Look, I’m gonna say something you might not wanna hear, okay? But I want you to really think about it, ‘cause, like, you only know what it’s like not to have a soulmark, so… take it from someone who knows what it’s like with one; it’s not… it’s not anything more than what it is, okay?”

Sif frowned in confusion. “I am not sure I follow.”

Darcy worked her soulmark bracelets off her wrists, showing them both to Sif. “Look, there. That’s what they are. They’re just… words. Or, I guess, in you guys’ case, they’re just symbols. They’re not… I mean, I suppose they are a kind of shortcut, but… it’s not a magical solution. We still have to play the game, we still have to take the risk that these people are going to stomp on our hearts instead of cherish them. It doesn’t magically fix every problem, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to love you unconditionally right from the start. It’s just… it’s just a little nudge from the universe. A little helping hand, a flag that says ‘if you can make it work, _this one_ is worth it’. That’s _it_. There’s nothing more to it.”

Sif sucked in a breath that shook, ever so slightly. “What is your point?” She asked uncertainly.

“You’re not missing out on as much as you think you are.” Darcy stated bluntly. For a moment, Sif looked furious, but then the anger melted away, and she closed her eyes as if in pain. “Not having a soulmark doesn’t mean you can never be loved, it just means you might have to work a little harder, risk a little bit more than the rest of us. It’s still up to _you_ if you’re willing to risk it, if you’re willing to put the work in, just like the rest of us.”

“As you said, I should heed your words, as I cannot know what it is like for those with a soulmark. Or two.” Sif stated, although she didn’t manage to sound like she entirely _wanted_ to. “It is hard to believe, though. It has always looked… very easy for the rest of you, from here.”

Darcy puffed up her cheeks like a chipmunk, staring incredulously, before letting out an explosive breath. “Oh, boy. Let me tell you, sister, it is _not easy_. I mean, geez. Bruce ran away from me for, like, _years_ because he thought he was gonna kill me. Loki totally missed Tony and Pep for over a freaking decade, and _they_ danced around each other for just as long. And Thor disappeared on Jane for years because he had duties here, right? It’s not easy.”

“I will think on your words, Daughter of Loki.” Sif said solemnly, inclining her head.

Darcy grinned. “You know, I think I could get used to that.”

Sif snorted. “You will be among… colourful company.”

Darcy straightened up sharply, eyes wide. “Wait, I have sibling? Step-sibling? Whatever. You mean Loki has other kids?” She asked eagerly.

Loki decided that, whatever Darcy heard about his other children, he did not want her hearing it from _Sif_ , no matter how friendly she had managed to be to Darcy. He allowed himself to become visible. “Darcy.” He called, striding forwards as if he’d just exited the hall, rather than having been loitering in the archway for the whole conversation. “You’re missing your own party.” He chided.

Darcy jumped and whirled, hand over her heart and a startled oath on her lips. Sif, on the other hand, only narrowed her eyes at him. “How long have you been there?” She demanded.

Loki gave her his best ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’ look of pure innocence. Darcy snorted in clear disbelief, but abandoned the view to wander over to his side. “You have no idea how _not_ to be a little shit, do you?” She asked him cheerfully.

“Why would I wish to know such a boring thing?” Loki responded lightly as Darcy towed him away from Sif, waving over her shoulder.

“So that less people want to murder you, maybe?” Darcy suggested, but then shook her head and abandoned the subject before he could answer her. “So I have step-siblings? That’s cool. I wanna know all about them.” She insisted.

“You do. And at least one half-brother.” Loki informed her.

“I have another half-brother? That’s _awesome_.” Darcy enthused. “Tell me. Tell me, tell me, tell me.” Rolling his eyes, Loki relented, and began to tell her about Peter.

* * *

Loki returned to Midgard with no fanfare. The moment Lady Eir freed the Queen from the infirmary, Loki hugged his mother goodbye, and headed for the Bifrost, chased by the sound of her laughter. Heimdall inclined his head to Loki when she got there, and activated the bridge without comment. She nodded back, cautious, because their truce was new and tentative, but it seemed to be holding.

Then she stepped through the Bifrost, and out onto the roof of Stark Tower. “Welcome home, Miss Silvers.” JARVIS greeted her, and she smiled into one of his cameras.

“It’s good to be home, JARVIS.” Loki assured him, slipping through the glass door and into the penthouse. She paused, looking around warily. She was not so ignorant that she didn’t recognise Christmas decorations when she saw them, but the sheer amount of tinsel – in brilliant red and gold – and fake snow, holly and mistletoe, and glitter in a veritable rainbow of colours seemed a bit excessive.

“May I just say that your timing is impeccable.” JARVIS complimented dryly.

Loki breathed deeply, the scents of cinnamon, oranges, and pine sap nearly overwhelming, and eyed the truly impressive tree standing pride of place in the middle of the room. “Tony was worried I would not return in time for the festivities, and over-compensated?” She guessed.

“Astute as ever, Ma’am.” JARVIS replied.

Loki sighed, but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “Where is he now?”

“On his way upstairs to greet you.” JARVIS informed her. “As is Miss Potts.”

So Loki waited, and sure enough, a minute or so later, Tony and Pepper appeared and crowded into her space with hugs and kisses. Loki could feel the stress of the last couple of months sliding off her, replaced with a soul-deep exhaustion. Thinking back to some of the things she’d overheard during her time as ruler in Asgard, Loki closed her eyes and let blue bleed over pale skin. Pepper drew back to study her, and then smiled in understanding. “Welcome home.”

“I am so glad you’re back.” Tony added emphatically.

Loki raised her eyebrows at him, and he looked away to avoid answering, so Loki switched her attention to Pepper, who appeared to be trying not to laugh. “Tony’s been having trouble adjusting to having Fury around the Tower more often.” Pepper informed her, eyes alight with good humour.

“I don’t trust him.” Tony groused into Loki’s hair.

Loki patted him gently on the back. “There, there, darling.” She cooed patronisingly. Tony grumbled wordlessly at her in answer. “Darcy likes him.” She reminded him.

Tony groaned. “Ugh, _why_?”

“You’d have to ask her.” Loki retorted blithely, and that made Tony laugh. Pepper sighed at them both, shaking her head fondly. “But from what I’ve observed, he does appear to be treating her well.” Loki added, just for the grudging look it put on Tony’s face.

“What you’ve observed?” Pepper asked.

Loki smiled beatifically at her. “I’ve been keeping an eye on everyone.”

Pepper huffed, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Of course you have. Sometimes you and Tony are _very_ alike. What am I going to do with the two of you?” She asked fondly.

Before either Loki or Tony could come up with a witty response, JARVIS interrupted. “Excuse me, sir, ma’ams.” Pepper and Loki both glanced upwards to show he had their attention, while Tony just gave a vague grunt of curiosity. “As per my instructions from Dr Banner, I am obliged to inform you that he appears to be approaching an incident in Miss Lewis’s presence.”

Tony groaned. “Again?”

“Again?” Loki echoed.

“What, you haven’t noticed in all your spying?” Tony challenged, grinning and poking Loki in the side just to make her squirm, since the guilt she was supposed to feel about spying on people wouldn’t make her squirm even if she did feel it, which she didn’t. Loki gave him the look that question deserved, because if she _had_ , she wouldn’t have asked, would she?

“This happens nearly every time Darcy and Bruce are left alone together.” Pepper told her on a sigh.

Loki considered that, and everything she’d learned about Bruce Banner and his issues, and Darcy’s attitude towards said issues. “I’m not surprised.” She admitted.

“Well, if you’re not going to zap us down there, I guess I’d better go get my suit on.” Tony sighed, reluctantly peeling himself away from Loki. “Unless you feel like playing intervention, Pep?”

“No, thank you.” Pepper replied lightly.

Loki hooked an arm around Tony and reeled him back in before he could get more than a step away from her. “Bruce is never going to learn how to deal with his own problems if you keep coddling him, Tony.” She chided, and Tony pulled a face.

“Bruce isn’t a child, Loki.” Pepper retorted, gentle but faintly disapproving. “He asked us for help. That’s not a bad thing.”

“No, but apparently, the Hulk _is_ , at least to some degree.” Loki countered, and saw surprise flash across both of her soulmate’s faces. That was not something Bruce had chosen to share with the class, then. “JARVIS? Can you show us the security feeds from wherever Darcy and Bruce are currently located?” She requested. “That way, if we truly are needed, we will know.” She explained to Tony and Pepper, who both nod in acceptance as the feed popped up as a hologram in front of them.

It was one of the labs, in the sort of mess that told Loki it was very much in use, and Darcy was standing over one of the work benches, hands braced, leaning forwards towards Bruce, who was hunched in on himself, backed away from the table, and yet, still managing to glare across it at Darcy. “-listen to Nick about this, but not me?” Bruce was asking, audibly frustrated.

Darcy snorted. “Because I trust Nick’s judgement about this _way_ more than I trust yours?” She suggested cheerfully, earning another baleful glare from Bruce. “Oh, come on, Bruce. You have to admit you’re _not_ unbiased about the Hulk.”

“I _can’t_ be unbiased-” Bruce started to snap, and then cut himself off, looking sharply away. “Darcy…!”

“There you go, then. And you do _get_ that I’m not about to reaffirm your stupid paranoid feedback loop, right?” Darcy went on, blithely ignoring the fact that, even without JARVIS’s sensors picking up the increased activity of Bruce’s various vital systems, it was quite obvious he was getting very close to the edge. There were little flares of green showing across his skin, surfacing and then receding like flashes of brightly coloured fish in a muddy pond.

“My _stupid paranoid feedback loop_?” Bruce echoed incredulously, outrage turning his voice rough and gravelly.

“Yeah.” Darcy confirmed, and then paused. “Okay, if that was actually a request for clarification, I- I don’t even know what to do with that. Have you not even _noticed_ that you’ve been deliberately avoiding being alone with me, and when you can’t, it literally takes you all of five minutes before you’re telling me to get lost because, oh, no, you’re having a _feeling_?”

All at once, Bruce snapped. His fist flew out, visibly doubling in size even as it swung, and Tony made a sharp, startled, angry noise at Loki’s side, and on her other side, Pepper gasped, hands flying up to her mouth. Loki tightened her arm around Tony’s waist to keep him from running off, and put a soothing hand on Pepper’s back. Darcy could take a hit from the Hulk now, and unless anyone was in serious danger of permanent injury, Loki was of a mind that they ought to be sorting this out properly, instead of putting it on hold yet again. The fact that having a physical connection to them both meant that it would be much easier to teleport them all into the lab at a moment’s notice was just a happy side-effect.

They needn’t have worried, though. The Hulk’s fist smashed into the workbench, not Darcy, and then, with a roar, he whirled and flung another one at the wall, where it shattered under the force. Darcy had taken two smart steps backwards when the table under her hands had splintered, but hadn’t retreated any further, and as the Hulk snatched up half of the first workbench, she whistled, impressed, and the Hulk froze. “Oh, man, that looks so satisfying. Hey, I wonder if I could do that now.”

The Hulk looked at her, and Darcy looked back, grinning and all but bouncing on the balls of her feet. Then the Hulk looked down at the half a shattered table in his hand, and proffered it to Darcy. “Want smash too?” He offered.

“Oh my god.” Tony whispered, somewhere between outraged and amused.

Darcy squealed, _actually_ bouncing now, although she paused when the Hulk flinched from the high-pitched noise and snarled. “Sorry, sorry, but oh my god, _yes_! Gimme!” She demanded. The table was quite unwieldy in her normal-sized hands when the Hulk handed it over, but Asgardian strength meant Darcy could hold and even throw it fairly easily, and she did. It crashed into a row of shelves, and shattered a good deal of the glass beakers, jars, and other containers sitting there. Darcy threw her arms in the air and whooped.

The Hulk grinned. When Darcy turned back to him, her expression softened, and she reached out to pat the Hulk’s massive forearm without hesitation. “I knew you’d be awesome.” She said lightly. “Now that we’ve proved it, maybe Bruce will be able to catch up, huh?”

The Hulk snorted. “Banner stupid.” He accused.

Darcy laughed. “Yeah, sometimes. I’m not giving up on him, though. Or on you.” She added, and the Hulk responded by scooping her up into a hug that might very well have crushed the bones of a normal human. Darcy just wheezed a little and hugged back. Then, laughing, she smacked a loud kiss onto the Hulk’s cheek. “Not to sound like I’m rushing you off, or anything, but I think I ought to talk to Bruce now.”

The Hulk growled, making his displeasure known, but then he started shrinking, and the green bled out of his skin, and within moments, Darcy’s feet were back on the floor, and she was more or less the only thing keeping Bruce upright. “Darcy?” He asked, sounding dazed.

“Not to say I told you so, but… I so freaking told you so.” Darcy said.

Bruce laughed, although it sounded choked. His arms tightened around Darcy, and he hid his face in her hair. “You could have been _hurt_.” It was an intimate, secret whisper, but JARVIS’s sensors were better than human ears, so the trio watching from the penthouse heard it anyway.

“We shouldn’t be watching this.” Pepper announced. Loki and Tony ignored her.

“But I wasn’t, so it’s fine.” Darcy insisted, carding her fingers through Bruce’s hair.

“I could have hurt you.” Bruce repeated, anguished.

“Alright, that’s it.” Pepper said sharply. “JARVIS, cut feed. And you two, don’t you _dare_ go down there and interrupt them.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it!” Tony protested as the hologram vanished obediently. Pepper gave him a look, and Tony pouted. “No, really, I wouldn’t! There wouldn’t be any point, anyway, all the work we managed to get done just got smashed.”

“What were you working on?” Loki asked.

“Direct neural interfacing.” Tony said excitedly.

Loki tipped her head to one side and smirked. “How quaint.” She said sweetly.

Tony glared at her, mouth open for a moment before he snapped it shut again. “I hate you so much. _So much_. Now I want to ask, and you _knew_ I’d want to ask, but I’m not going to because I can figure this out on my own, damnit!”

Loki gave an evil little chuckle and glanced at Pepper, to see her laughing at them behind her hand. “Now that that little distraction has been dealt with, perhaps one of you can reassure me that _this year’s_ plans don’t include me fighting a megalomaniac in my underwear?”

“That depends.” Pepper said ruefully.

Loki narrowed her eyes. “On what?” She asked warily.

“On whether you think Tony counts as a megalomaniac or not.” Pepper answered with a perfectly straight face. Loki blinked once, and then laughed. Grinning now, Pepper went on to tell her the rest of the plans. They were surprisingly simple, considering that Tony had clearly had a hand in the decorating, if nothing else, but Loki started to suspect that Pepper had used that as a distraction to keep Tony from planning anything more dramatic.

The days ticked by. Darcy and Bruce vanished from the tower before Loki could say hello for what she later found out was Fury’s birthday, and all three of them reappeared on Christmas Eve, cutting it close enough that Tony was in something of a grumpy mood for the first half of the day. Thor and Jane actually arrived before them.

His mood improved by the afternoon though, and that was when the chaos began. Pepper tried to put on some holiday appropriate songs, carols just eclectic enough that everyone could enjoy at least a few of them, but then Darcy had stuck on something that made Tony groan in abject disgust, and the next thing Loki knew, the music was switching between ridiculous parodies, some very garish pop songs, and even, for some reason Loki couldn’t fathom, a song about _Halloween_. Then Tony dragged Thor into a competition to build the best gingerbread house, and sanity was lost.

Everyone was shouting to be heard over the music and three different conversations were being held at once, there was flour everywhere, and JARVIS was being very passive-aggressive about making fire-alarm noises whenever even the barest hint of smoke started to trickle out of the barely-used kitchen on the top floor.

About half way through the evening, a firework display started up right outside the tower’s windows, one of the more impressive ones Loki had ever seen on Midgard, although, she knew she could do better with magic. That thought wouldn’t leave her alone, so when Tony’s – because of course it was Tony’s – display came to a dramatic red-gold-green coloured conclusion, she wove together a spell and flicked it out into the night’s sky.

A few seconds later, there was a glittering, fizzing, sparking dragon sweeping along Park Avenue towards the tower. It skimmed up the side, past the windows, and then exploded into glittering golden rain above the tower. Loki had just enough time to wink at a laughing Darcy before Tony was seizing her and kissing her fiercely. When he drew back, he looked almost manic with glee.

The display prompted Thor to begin a dramatic, and rather exaggerated, retelling of the time he and Loki, along with the Warriors Three and Sif, took on a dragon. Loki found that in this company, she didn’t mind so much, letting Thor tell the story as he pleased. Even the addition of people who Loki herself had no particular care for, and had no care for her in turn, like Fury, Bruce, and even Jane to an extent, wasn’t enough to put a damper on her mood. They were, to a one, better than _Odin_ , and for that, Loki could tolerate them with equanimity.

Pepper insisted that everyone go to bed before midnight, because it was _tradition_ , but Loki was fairly certain that not a single one of them was actually going to _sleep_ before midnight. Christmas night was it’s own form of celebration.

Christmas Day was, again, different. There was a sleepy, cosy air to the penthouse, and several people remained in their pyjamas as Pepper gathered everyone together for a buffet-style breakfast and a present-exchange. The room slowly filled with piles of wrapping paper like colourful snowdrifts, which only encouraged people not to attempt to move. Loki was entirely content with that, because she had her head in Pepper’s lap, and her legs hooked over Tony’s, and she was quite happy testing the balance of the new knives that had been a gift from Thor by flipping them around her fingers.

“Oh, shit, what time is it?” Darcy asked abruptly, followed by a crinkling crunching noise as she patted through piles of wrapping paper searching for something.

“It is one thirty-five, Ma’am.” JARVIS informed her.

“Oops. I promised my mom I’d call her at midday. Where’s my _phone_?” Darcy whined.

“If I may, Ma’am?” JARVIS offered.

Darcy looked up and then around. “If no one else minds?” She asked, and there was a chaotic chorus of mixed assent and denial, all of which somehow translated to no one minding. Loki huffed at the mess it turned into when one both understood the language _and_ understood the inherent meaning thanks to the magic of all-speak. “Cool!” Darcy chirped. “Hey, JARVIS, if you call Cassidy’s phone, we should be able to do video chat!”

JARVIS pulled up a hologram, and the sound of a phone ringing filled the room. Without a moment of hesitation, Loki let her skin bleed blue. Better to keep her identities as ‘Snow Queen’ and Loki as separate as possible in the eyes of anyone outside Avenger’s tower. It was only once the call had been picked up, and the hologram screen in the middle of the room had filled with the face of a grinning teenage boy, that Loki realised there wasn’t even a twinge of discomfort or hesitation in her.

“Darcy! You’re late, and mom’s fretting.” The boy, Cassidy, accused brightly.

“Ugh, I’m _fine_!” Darcy groaned, slumping dramatically into Bruce’s lap. “Tell her to stop being a worry-wart!”

Cassidy snorted. “Tell her yourself. Mom! Darcy’s on the phone!”

“Finally!” A woman’s voice replied, and then the camera angle shifted and jostled until a woman with messy, dirty-blonde hair just like the boy appeared at a somewhat awkward angle in the corner of the screen. “Oh, it’s a video-call. Darcy, sweetheart, I was starting to get worried.”

“I’m _fine_ , Mom.” Darcy repeated. “Look, see?” She gestured at herself.

“Yes.” The woman said, somewhat wryly. “I can see that. Why don’t you introduce me to your, hm, _friend_?” She suggested.

Darcy wrinkles up her nose. “Geez, Mom, I already posted about it on… basically everywhere, actually. Didn’t you see? Are you not following me or something? Unfriended on Facebook by my own _mother_!” She lamented, while the boy who must be her half-brother on her mother’s side snickered in the corner of the screen.

Her mother scoffed. “Of course I saw, that’s why I’m not ‘freaking out’ at you right now, but that’s not the same as a proper introduction! I can’t believe you decided not to bring your soulmates _home_ with you on your very first Christmas together, honestly. I was so looking forward to seeing you again, sweetheart.”

“You’re seeing me right now!” Darcy protested. Her mother clicked her tongue in clear disapproval. “They have, like, work and stuff that keeps them in the city, okay? And besides, I’m totally home for Christmas, it’s just I have, like, basically three different homes now.”

That gave her mother pause. “Wait, where are you right now? Your Facebook only said New York.”

“Stark Tower!” Darcy chirped.

“Hello, Moira!” Tony called, leaning sideways and waving. JARVIS must have displayed it for Cassidy and Moira, because Moira’s lips pursed in a way that suggested she was trying very hard not to frown, while Cassidy’s eyes went huge and he whispered a very unsubtle little ‘oh my _god_ ’.

“Hello, Tony.” Moira said in strained tones, and then. “But we’ve gotten off topic, Darcy, sweetheart. Introductions!” She reminded her.

“Right, right. Mom, meet my soulmates. This is Bruce, and- Nick, come over here and say hi. Don’t mind him, Mom, he’s camera-shy.” Fury gave her a flat look, but obligingly shoved a pile of wrapping paper onto the floor so that he could slide a little closer to where she was leaning back against the front of the couch he was sitting on. “What? Don’t look at me like that! You are!”

“For good reason.” Fury retorted.

“So? Reason-shmeason. It’s still _true_.”

Moira, Loki noticed, had begun to look rather apprehensive when she’d seen both of Darcy’s soulmates, even though she covered it with a decent attempt at a welcoming smile. Loki was quite certain that neither Fury nor Bruce missed it, and she was fairly sure Darcy hadn’t, either, although it was always harder to tell with Darcy. Much like Tony, her social perceptiveness varied between startlingly astute and blithely ignorant. Loki was _still_ trying to figure out if it was wilful ignorance or not.

“It’s very good to meet you both.” Moira said, and that much, at least, sounded sincere.

“You as well, Mrs Lewis.” Bruce said politely, nervously adjusting his glasses.

“And obviously, this is my first mom, and my first brother, Cass.”

“First mom?” Moira echoed, pained.

“Yeah, I _also_ have like three moms now. Sweet, right? And… how many brothers?”

“Five more.” Loki called. “And three sisters.”

“Right!” Darcy chirped.

The conversation continued from there, with Moira fretfully interrogating both Darcy _and_ her new soulmates, but Loki missed it, because it was then that Pepper leaned down a little, her hair swinging down in a soft curtain to tickle Loki’s forehead, to say “Perhaps next time, we’ll be able to invite a few more of them?”

Tony choked on the gingerbread he was eating, and Loki went carefully still. “What?” Tony rasped out once he’s done coughing.

“Tony, you can’t pretend you’re not _thrilled_ to have Darcy in our lives.” Pepper pointed out. “What makes Peter and Lydia so different?”

“It’s not- That’s not-” Tony spluttered.

Loki reached up to card her fingers through Pepper’s hair. The pale ginger on pale blue made for a strangely compelling contrast. “Darcy gave us no choice.”

Pepper raised her eyebrows in challenge. “And if you have a choice, you’d choose not to make room for your other children in your lives?” She asked, glancing up to make the point that Tony was very much included in that question. He looked away, jaw set stubbornly, and Loki resigned herself to having to be the one to put it to words.

“They will always have room in our lives.” Loki said, and hated the way her voice was icing over.

“Then why not tell them so? They deserve to know.” Pepper insisted.

“They deserve to be _safe_.” Loki bit out.

Pepper blinked, then looked over at Tony, checking to see whether he agreed with what Loki was implying. “They deserve _better_.” Tony agreed without looking at her, his hand clenching and unclenching on his knee. With a sigh, Pepper reached out and curled her own hand into his, stilling the anxious motion.

“They do.” She agreed, in a tone that was silk over steel, soft, but unyielding. “But we can’t give them that. We can’t give them safety, and we can’t give them perfection.” She caught Loki’s eye, and Loki knew she’d lost this battle already, from the fierce gleam in Pepper’s eye. It was, strangely, a relief, to have the choice taken out of her hands. Pepper would not let her be a coward. She wouldn’t let either of them run from this any longer. “But we can give them everything else.”

Across the room, Darcy laughed at something her little brother had said, her hand in Fury’s and her arm around Bruce’s shoulders, and Loki figured Pepper was right. If nothing else, they were building a pretty good family here, out of the bits and pieces, and it certainly didn’t seem to be doing Darcy any harm. She was as safe and happy as they could make her, in love and vibrant with it, and that was enough to give Loki hope.


End file.
